India faced the second-highest number of cyberattacks in the Asia Pacific in 2020 after Japan, accounting for 7% of all attacks in the region. Finance and Insurance were the most targeted sectors followed by manufacturing and professional services, said IBM’s new report.
The pandemic-led shift to remote working and learning has triggered a wave of new cyberattacks targeting poorly secured or vulnerable devices and endpoints.
According to IBM’s 2021 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, published February 24., ransomware was the most widely used attack, accounting for roughly 40% of all attacks detected in India. The soaring cryptocurrency prices, particularly Bitcoin, have also led to a spike in the mining of cryptos. Also referred to as cryptojacking, in this attack, hackers remotely control thousands of devices to use their computing power for mining cryptocurrencies.
Indian companies were also targeted by server access attacks in 2020.
Though attacks were detected throughout the year, the highest number of attacks on companies in India was reported between May and July. This was a transition phase for several companies coming out of the pan India lockdown.
“The 2020 threat landscape in India was largely shaped by the pandemic. As the pandemic’s timeline of events and progress unfolded, so did attack trends shift,” Sudeep Das, security software technical sales leader, IBM Technology Sales, India/South Asia said in a statement.
Das adds, in 2020 we also saw cybercriminals using relief efforts and public health information as spam lures and carry out targeted attacks on critical components of the vaccine supply chain.
