THE Philippines is among the countries worldwide where computer users are highly susceptible to online infection, according to Kaspersky Lab Inc.
According to the security firm’s Bulletin 2014, Kaspersky products detected and neutralized nearly 6.2 billion threats from November 2013 to October 2014. Also, they claim to have blocked roughly 1.4 billion attacks from online resources located in different countries.
We determine the nations in which users most often encountered cyber threats by calculating how often they faced detection verdicts on their machines, Kaspersky said in a statement.
Results of the study showed Russia topped the list where 53.81 percent of users faced the risk of online infection; followed by Kazakhstan, 53.04 percent; and Azerbaijan (last year’s leader), 49.64 percent.
The 20 countries were divided into three groups. The high risk group, in which over 41 percent of users per country faced the greatest risk of web-based attacks, included nine nations from the top 20.
In the risk group, 21 percent to 40 percent of users in every country were exposed to online infection.
Included in the 111 nations assessed of having in the high risk category, the Philippines garnered 27.2 percent together with some of its Asian neighbors, such as China (30.1 percent) and Japan (21.2 percent)—all rated with having the greatest risk of web-based attacks.
Meanwhile, the low risk group (zero percent to 20.9 percent) included 39 countries with the safest online surfing environments, such as Sweden (19.5 percent), Denmark (19.2 percent), Uruguay (19.5 percent) and a number of African countries.
For this year it was found out that 38.3 percent of computers were subjected to at least one web attack while their owners were online.
Most notably of which was via exploit packs that gives attackers a chance to infect the user’s computer either with no security solution at all or has at least one but not updated application installed. Nevertheless, exploit packs slightly decreased by 3.3 percentage points over the year.
Since online exploits are seen to remain the major way used to deliver malware including for targeted attacks, Kaspersky Lab Southeast Asia Channel Sales Director Jimmy Fong advised computer users to still keep their guards up despite the slight decline of online attacks.
“Web-based infections remain a dominant threat to users’ privacy; as well as their personal and financial data if their computers are unprotected,” he said.