Web threats detected locally increase in the 4th qtr.

THE Philippines was seventh in the world in terms of the number of web threats detected during the fourth quarter of last year.

“Nearly 4 million Internet-borne threats were detected in computers of Kaspersky users based in the Philippines who surfed the web from October to December in 2019,” cybersecurity company Kaspersky said on Monday.

Kaspersky said the Philippines climbed “six notches” from 13^th spot in the same period of the previous year.

Latest data from the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) showed that 3,906,410 web threats were detected in the computers of Philippine-based Kaspersky users during the last quarter of 2019.

Mary Grace V. Sotayco, Kaspersky’s territory manager for the Philippines, said: “Being one of the world’s top Internet users, I think there’s no stopping the Filipinos from utilizing the web as a part of their modern way of life. We’re hoping that as they completely embrace this technology, so too will their practice of cyber hygiene as long as they go online.”

As for the malware attacks from USBs, CDs, DVDs and other removable media, Kaspersky said: “The Philippines is currently at 64^th place globally with only 8,998,044 detections in Q4 of 2019 which is a significant drop from its 74^th place with 11,757,863 detections in Q4 of 2018.”

Incidents of malware being shared from servers in the Philippines went down to 76,000 in the fourth quarter of 2019. Compare this to the 453,788 incidents recorded in the fourth quarter of the previous year, Kaspersky said.

Kaspersky’s General-Manager for Southeast Asia Yeo Siang Tiong said: “The significant drop in local threat infections tells us that there’s good news here. Filipinos are slowly understanding the risks, which the numbers reflect. We recognize the challenges which are almost similar across the region. Shifting the mindset is a collective effort and we’ll continue doing our part in sharing our threat intelligence and expertise to the public and to our partners in the government and private sectors.” — Arjay L. Balinbin