KUALA LUMPUR, April 26 ― Web threats targeting businesses in Malaysia logged a jump of 197 per cent last year, according to global cybersecurity and anti-virus provider Kaspersky.

In a statement today, Kaspersky said during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, it prevented 10,200,817 web attacks from infecting businesses in Southeast Asia.

"Web attacks spiked in 2022 at 13,381,164, and the number dipped slightly in 2021 at 9,180,344,” it said.

Kaspersky said that Singapore logged the highest year-on-year jump in terms of web threats targeting businesses last year.

"The Southeast Asian country logged more than a three-fold spike (329 per cent) after Kaspersky’s business solutions blocked a total of 889,093 web attacks, a whopping increase from 2021’s total of just 207,175 incidents.

"The uptick was also observed across other Southeast Asian countries with Malaysia (197 per cent), Thailand (63 per cent), Indonesia (46 per cent), and the Philippines (29 per cent).

Kaspersky added that only Vietnam witnessed a slight dip (-12 per cent) after recording only 2,485,168 web threat incidents last year as compared to 2,822,591 in 2021.

Web-based threats, or online threats, refer to attempts to download malicious objects from a malicious/infected website.

Kaspersky said that web threats are made possible by end-user vulnerabilities, web service developers and operators, or web services themselves.

"Regardless of intent or cause, the consequences of a web threat may damage both individuals and organisations,” it said. ― Bernama