DR is prey to malware attacks and phishing
The Dominican Republic ranks fourth among countries in the Central American and Caribbean region in terms of being subjected to the most cyber attacks, according to a recent Microsoft Report. The report on cyber security in the region by Microsoft placed the Dominican Republic as a high risk for malware threats.
The technology company released data from the Security Intelligence (SIR) report to local media. The document represents the analysis of more than 6.5 billion threat signals received daily by Microsoft’s cloud computing system during the January-June 2019 period.
Data from this document assures that malware attacks decreased by 67% in Central America and the Caribbean. However, the rate of malware encounters in the region is 28% higher than the global average; this is reflected in the crypto-mint sector, where the creation of malware for digital coin mining is 40% higher than the global average.
The Dominican Republic ranks fourth with 5.96% of malware-type cyber attacks, only behind Nicaragua (7.88%), Honduras (6.18%) and Guatemala (6.15%). The countries in the region with the lowest rate of cyber attacks of this type are Puerto Rico (2.21%), Trinidad & Tobago (3.12%) and Costa Rica (3.28%).
Federico Muller, modern workplace solutions manager at Microsoft, attributes the high risk in the Dominican Republic to the low digital education of the population. Primarily, the Dominican community is prey to phishing, in which attackers disguise the virus in an email with misleading advertising.
Overall the malware encounter rate in Central America and the Caribbean is 28 % higher than the global average.
Microsoft recommends everyone step up their security practices that apply both to individuals and companies to minimize chances of success of a cyber attack.
Users can use tools such as antivirus, dual-factor authentication, and make backups in the cloud to prevent data loss.
Source: DR1
Aug 16, 2019
Category: DR News |