GEC NEWS WIRESymantec’s Internet Security Threat Report, Volume 21, revealed an organizational shift by cybercriminals: They are adopting corporate best practices and establishing professional businesses in order to increase the efficiency of their attacks against enterprises and consumers. This new class of professional cybercriminal spans the entire ecosystem of attackers, extending the reach of enterprise and consumer threats and fueling the growth of online crime.
“Advanced criminal attack groups now echo the skill sets of nation-state attackers. They have extensive resources and highly-skilled technical staff that operate with such efficiency that they maintain normal business hours and even take the weekends and holidays off,” said Hassam Sidani, Regional Manager for Gulf, Symantec.
The UAE’s 2015 Internet Security Threat Profile has dramatically jumped in world ranking from 49 in 2014 to 41 in 2015. This shift indicates a higher global percentage of source-based security threats, including malicious code, spam, phishing hosts, web and network attacks, and bots from the country.
In the UAE, spam and malicious code (malware) were the most prevalent threats as well: 1 in 199 emails contained malware, while more than half (55.2 percent) of the emails were spam. Businesses in the UAE were a victim of 2.7 percent of global targeted attacks, with an organization facing an average of 2.2 attacks through the year.
Ransomware also continued to evolve in 2015, with the more damaging style of crypto-ransomware attacks growing by 35 percent.
