There were 63 billion cybersecurity threats that were blocked globally in the first semester of 2022, an increase of more than half or 52% due to the onslaught of ransomware-as-a-service attacks and activities by advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, according to Trend Micro.
The cybersecurity firm’s Mid-Year Roundup Report showed that among the regions studied, the highest number of email, business email compromise, and malicious URL threats were blocked in Asia. These include nearly eight billion threats in the first half of 2022, with over six billion coming from email threats alone.
Europe and the Americas trail close, with over five billion and two billion threats blocked, respectively.
In Asia, Singapore is among the top countries in terms of the number of blocked threats.
David Ng, Singapore country manager at Trend Micro, said new and emerging threat groups continue to evolve their business models, focusing their attacks with even greater precision.
“That’s why it is essential that organisations get better at mapping, understanding, and protecting their expanding digital attack surface,” said Ng.
The results of the Mid-Year Roundup Report echo the sentiments of 6,297 IT security decision-makers from 29 countries, surveyed in Trend Micro’s 2022 Global Risk Study on risks associated with the growing attack surface.
According to this study, over 86% of Southeast Asia respondents are worried about the growing attack surface, with 66% admitting to having blind spots that hamper security.
The situation in Singapore shares the same sentiment — 85% of respondents are worried about the growing attack surface, and nearly half (49%) claimed it is “constantly evolving and messy,” with only half (52%) able to fully define its extent.
Also, half (50%) of respondents went further to admit the digital attack surface is “spiralling out of control.”
Challenges pertaining to overloaded security teams, alert fatigue, and shortage of skilled talent continue to plague businesses in Singapore.
Ultimately, this is resulting in a lack of control and visibility across the growing attack surface, hampering a business’ ability to adequately understand, mitigate, respond, and manage cyber risks.
“As Singapore cements its position as the region’s digital hub, organisations need to better prepare for, withstand, and rapidly recover from threats, by better empowering security teams,” said Ng. “The first step towards achieving this is a single, unified cybersecurity platform.”
