By Goh Chee Hoh, Managing Director, Asia South and Hong Kong, Trend Micro | Dec 26, 2008

3 comments

Facebook

LinkedIn

Digg

We know that security threats to businesses in Asia Pacific have compounded in the last few years because TrendLabs - Trend Micro’s global network of research, service and support centers - has monitored an increase of over 1,500% in the threats coming through the web since 2005.

This translates into the fact that businesses in Asia-Pacific are struggling to constantly guard against the more sophisticated Web threat landscape that has mutated beyond conventional viruses and spam.

With the current economic climate, businesses will now be looking for safer, smarter, simpler solutions specifically tailored to their needs that protect their assets, their customer information and, most importantly, their reputation.

2008 year in review

In the security industry, we’ve seen how Web activity made a huge increase in the first six month of the year. In a period of just four months, Web threats spiked by 35 million globally – hitting an all time high of 50 million Web threats in March this year as compared to 15 million in December of 2007.

Trend Micro’s Internet Security Threat figures showed that although an upswing in Web threats took place in the first half of 2008, there was also a steady decrease in adware and spyware that were generated by outdated technical methods which could no longer compete with high-level security solutions.

In 2008, we also saw a rise in the number of online security threats which has prompted more companies to take on a more tactical approach in dealing with cyber crime. Investments in IT security has taken on a more important role, as a must have and a much needed application, as businesses started to see how a single spam email or disgruntled employee could compromise the entire network and business.

Through research conducted by Trend Micro, we found that almost 97% of all email are now spam. Over 164 billion spam emails were sent across the world in August alone which means that users could be drowning in hundreds or even thousands of unwanted, annoying, and potentially dangerous email every day.

And this, in the business context, could translate in a situation where business data is compromised if employees are not careful.

3 comments

Facebook

LinkedIn

Digg