AgenciesKolkata: India saw a whopping 845% jump in mobile cyberattacks between October 2020 and March 2021, even as most of the country’s corporate workforce and students continued to work and study from home.
The total number of mobile cyberattacks jumped from 1,345 cases in October 2020 to 12,719 in March 2021, according to Check Point Software Technologies’ Mobile Security Report 2021.
After the first wave of pandemic-induced lockdowns last year, internet service providers (ISPs) in India had said they received cyberattack alerts from corporate clients almost every alternate day compared with an average of once a week before the lockdowns.
“The move to mass remote working during the pandemic saw the mobile attack surface expand dramatically, resulting in 97% of organisations worldwide facing mobile threats from several attack vectors,” Check Point Software said in its latest report.
Nearly, every organisation (globally), it said, experienced at least “one mobile malware attack in 2020, and 93% of such attacks originated in a device network, which attempted to trick users into installing a malicious payload via infected websites or URLs, or to steal users’ credentials.
Worse, 46% of organisations worldwide had at least one employee download a malicious mobile app that threatened their organisation’s networks and data in 2020, the report added.
Further, Check Point’s report showed that at least 40%—or four out of 10 mobile devices globally—are inherently vulnerable to cyberattacks due to flaws in their chipsets, and need urgent patching.
Last year, Check Point had unravelled a 15% rise in banking trojan activity where users’ mobile banking credentials are at risk of being stolen. Potential threat actors, it said, had been spreading mobile malware, including mobile remote access trojans (MRATs), banking trojans, and premium dialers, often hiding the malware in apps that claim to offer Covid-19-related information.
“The mobile threat landscape has continued to expand with almost every organisation now having experienced an attack,” says Neatsun Ziv, vice president (threat prevention) at Check Point Software. There are more complex threats on the horizon as cybercriminals are continuing to evolve and adapt techniques to exploit a growing reliance on mobiles, he added.
Enterprises, he said, need to adopt mobile security solutions that seamlessly protect devices from today’s advanced cyber threats, and users should be careful to use only apps from official app stores to minimize their risk.
Check Point’s 2021 Mobile Security report is based on data collected from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020, across 1,800 organisations using its mobile threat defense solution, Harmony Mobile.
The total number of mobile cyberattacks jumped from 1,345 cases in October 2020 to 12,719 in March 2021, according to Check Point Software Technologies’ Mobile Security Report 2021.
Check Point is a global cybersecurity solutions provider. Its latest report examines emerging threats to enterprise mobile devices from malicious apps to ransomware attacks.
After the first wave of pandemic-induced lockdowns last year, internet service providers (ISPs) in India had said they received cyberattack alerts from corporate clients almost every alternate day compared with an average of once a week before the lockdowns.
“The move to mass remote working during the pandemic saw the mobile attack surface expand dramatically, resulting in 97% of organisations worldwide facing mobile threats from several attack vectors,” Check Point Software said in its latest report.
Nearly, every organisation (globally), it said, experienced at least “one mobile malware attack in 2020, and 93% of such attacks originated in a device network, which attempted to trick users into installing a malicious payload via infected websites or URLs, or to steal users’ credentials.
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Worse, 46% of organisations worldwide had at least one employee download a malicious mobile app that threatened their organisation’s networks and data in 2020, the report added.
Further, Check Point’s report showed that at least 40%—or four out of 10 mobile devices globally—are inherently vulnerable to cyberattacks due to flaws in their chipsets, and need urgent patching.
Last year, Check Point had unravelled a 15% rise in banking trojan activity where users’ mobile banking credentials are at risk of being stolen. Potential threat actors, it said, had been spreading mobile malware, including mobile remote access trojans (MRATs), banking trojans, and premium dialers, often hiding the malware in apps that claim to offer Covid-19-related information.
“The mobile threat landscape has continued to expand with almost every organisation now having experienced an attack,” says Neatsun Ziv, vice president (threat prevention) at Check Point Software. There are more complex threats on the horizon as cybercriminals are continuing to evolve and adapt techniques to exploit a growing reliance on mobiles, he added.
Enterprises, he said, need to adopt mobile security solutions that seamlessly protect devices from today’s advanced cyber threats, and users should be careful to use only apps from official app stores to minimize their risk.
Check Point’s 2021 Mobile Security report is based on data collected from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020, across 1,800 organisations using its mobile threat defense solution, Harmony Mobile.
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