Posted by Mumbai: The overall chance of home users encountering a cyber threat has increased worldwide year over year. However, for Indian PC home users, the likelihood of encountering cyber threats is 28%. That’s slightly lower than the 29.39% global average according to Avast’s new report.
Indian PC home users with a 28% risk of cyber threats against 29.39% global average have a slightly lesser risk of facing all types of threats, according to Avast’s latest Global PC Risk report.
The digital security company Avast in its report stated that the overall chance of home users encountering a cyber threat has increased worldwide year over year.
“The risk ratio has increased worldwide for all malware attacks, and we can see that India is no exception,” said Michal Salat, Director of Threat Intelligence – Avast.
“In the pandemic, the internet has been kind of a ‘life saver’ for many, empowering them to stay connected with loved ones during the lockdown, to attend virtual workout sessions, get togethers, classes, and work remotely,” commented Salat.
“But cybercriminals have also taken notice of this, and so we have seen a variety of tailored campaigns taking advantage of increased online activities, such as Covid-19 related attacks, sextortion campaigns, spyware, and ransomware,” added Salat.
The report also looks into the possibility of users facing ‘advanced’ threats. Avast defines them as more sophisticated or unknown threats, designed to bypass common protection technologies in security software. These include signatures, heuristics, emulators, URL filtering, and email scanning.
For this type of advanced threat, Indian home users have a 5.78% risk ratio, which is higher than the global average.
The Global Scenario
Home users globally have a 29.39% chance of encountering any type of PC malware, which is around 5% more compared to 2020.
The chances of users being targeted by an advanced threat are lower, but the proportion is similar to all threats, with consumers having a 5% chance of encountering an advanced threat (4.61% in the previous year).
Geographies with more conflictive socio-political situations, such as the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, seem to be facing more risk in the online world as well.
The top 10 countries in which home users are most at risk of encountering threats are:
| All Threats Top 10 Countries Most at Risk: Home Users | Advanced Threats Top 10 Countries Most at Risk: Home Users |
| Afghanistan (49.47%) Yemen (47.81%) Ethiopia (45.84%) Egypt (44.94%) Rwanda (43.45%) Algeria (43.34%) Madagascar (43.03%) Angola (42.88%) Togo (42.34%) Serbia (42.30%) | China (20.22%) Turkmenistan (14.63%) Afghanistan (14.13%) Tajikistan (12.52%) Yemen (12.46%) Iran (11.85%) Ghana (11.49%) Myanmar (11.42%) Uganda (11.29%) Republic of the Congo (11.27%) |
This report provides an overview of cyberattacks that happened within thirty days, giving a picture in time of the general risk users and businesses face globally and in different countries.
(Image source – Sigmund/Unsplash)