PETALING JAYA, Feb 20 ― The threat of cyber attacks in Malaysia is expected to remain on the rise in 2024, especially for organisations dealing with personal data in the financial and telecommunications industries, according to global cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

The company revealed that in 2023, its detection systems blocked 26.85 million "Internet-borne” attacks in Malaysia, representing 74,000 attacks per day.

In the case of "local infection”, Kaspersky's detection system blocked 22 million threats in the country, which translated to 60,000 attacks per day.

Kaspersky general manager for Southeast Asia, Yeo Siang Tiong, said the sophistication of every attack has stepped up over the years and even the most secure operating systems can be compromised.

"As advanced persistent threat (APT) actors are constantly evolving their tactics and searching for new weaknesses to exploit, businesses must prioritise the security of their systems.

"This involves providing employees and technical teams with the latest tools to effectively recognise and defend against potential threats as well as the timely remediation of incidents,” he told a media conference today on Malaysia's cyber threat landscape for 2024.

Kaspersky today officially launched its integrated software solution that includes a set of functions for event monitoring and management ― the Kaspersky Unified Monitoring and Analysis Platform (KUMA) ― to help businesses and organisations stay safe in cyberspace while embracing digitalisation.

KUMA empowers cybersecurity teams in detecting, investigating, and responding to complex cyber incidents with the approach of extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities.

Organisations of different sizes and maturity can deploy KUMA to receive security events from various third-party sources and security tools while correlating these events with contextual threat intelligence feeds to identify suspicious or anomalous activities, thus providing timely notification of security incidents.

"By collecting security events from all security controls and correlating them in real-time with advanced analytics, KUMA aggregates all the information needed for further incident investigation and response.

"Hence, using KUMA helps organisations gain insights and intelligence by providing the visibility and context needed to understand their security posture and risks,” said Victor Chu, Kaspersky head of systems engineering for Southeast Asia. ― Bernama