It is worrying that this year Serbia was often at the top of the list of countries with the highest percentage of attacks on industrial systems, so in November 2021 it took first place, with a share of 39.4% of industrial computers that suffered some kind of attack. The most attacks were experienced by infrastructure companies, according to Kaspersky, which was announced today at an online event.
“The fact that Serbia has often been at the very top of the countries with the highest percentage of attacks on industrial systems this year shows how important the protection of industrial computers really is. It is obvious that these systems in Serbia are an interesting target for cyber criminals precisely because of the lower level of protection. In addition to the lack of reliable cybersecurity solutions, educating employees on the basics of cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important in defending corporate resources,” said Dragan Davidović, B2B Business Director for Eastern Europe.
He also explained that there is not enough talk in Serbia about cyber attacks, and that companies often use the lack of funds as an excuse for the lack of investment. According to their information, there were companies that paid for the “purchase of data”, but their advice is not to do it at any cost, because in that way it enables the financing of crime, and it is certain that it will be used to attack another company. At the same time, they pointed out that companies that have Kaspersky Solutions are quite well protected, as practice shows.
According to the findings of Kaspersky, in 2021, a slight decrease in the total number of threats was registered in Serbia compared to last year, especially when it comes to the number of attacks on Web, PC and mobile devices (-7.32%).
However, experts explained that one of the reasons is that companies were not well enough prepared to work from home last year, while security systems have been improved this year.
Compared to last year, the number of total detection of ransomware attacks in Serbia has dropped dramatically (by 78.23%).
“The data can be a little misleading. Namely, last year, people worked from home, and the companies could not adapt quickly. In addition, it turned out that the education of workers is insufficient, that they are not trained to recognize even basic threats. In the second pandemic year, the protection was improved and that is why the results are better, but the number of attacks is still at a high level,” Davidović explained.
The total number of registered financial malware decreased by 20%, but the reasons for this decline are only partly in the fact that banks traditionally invest the most in their own and IT security of their users. In line with the global trend, several smaller banks have been merged into larger ones, so the number of attacks on single users is seemingly smaller, but these attacks are extremely sophisticated and advanced and carry a huge risk.
“The more companies invest in cyber protection, the more growth and investment of those who attack because they are good organizations. So, they are also looking for easier bullets that they can attack with less investment,” said Davidović.
The experts of this company also pointed out that espionage is more and more prevalent, and that the entire society should deal with this issue, because the results of the recently conducted research are devastating.
Namely, a survey by Kaspersky recently showed worrying statistics that as many as 30% of respondents consider it completely normal, permissible and justified to follow their partners without their knowledge, and 15% even openly asked partners to install stalkerware applications. Of these, 34% also reported experiencing some form of violence from their partner. Due to the specific circumstances in which we live and reduced movement, Kaspersky’s statistics show a certain decrease in the number of registered cases, but this phenomenon remains a serious social problem that requires additional attention.
“It is necessary to work on raising awareness on this issue, because this is a work that is very difficult to discover and prove. That is why it is important to start a dialogue so that people have knowledge about this issue,” said Davidović.
The digital transformation has continued its accelerated pace
The digital transformation has continued its accelerated pace during 2021, which means that the Internet is becoming richer for an increasing amount of data. Many companies have adopted a hybrid model of work that allows simultaneous work from the office or from home, which puts before their IT departments the need to ensure that both modalities are safe and secure for the company.
This means that companies must provide all the devices of their employees to which they access the network both remotely and on-site, set up virtual private networks (VPNs), move to cloud servers and quickly establish the use of new collaboration software. All of this has greatly burdened security teams that have to protect organizations from cyber attacks, but now across remote, hybrid and increasingly challenging infrastructures, along with optimizing budgets dedicated to IT security.
“Our data show that companies around the world have done well when it comes to resisting attacks that lead to data leaks. Although their budgets have remained the same (for SMEs) or reduced (for large enterprises), small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide report only a slight increase in the cost of data attacks (105,000 dollars in 2021 compared to with 101 thousand dollars in 2020). Globally, the leakage costs for large companies have dropped to 927,000 dollars from 1.09 million dollars compared to last year,” said Miroslav Koren, Kaspersky’s general manager for Eastern Europe, BiF reports.
