Romania is in the medium risk category in the global hierarchy of cyber attacks, while government institutions are vulnerable especially because they use outdated systems, according to Stefan Tanase, senior security researcher Kaspersky Lab, capital.ro informs.
Worldwide, among the countries most vulnerable to cyber attacks are the former Soviet republics – Russia, Ukraine, Belarus or Rep. of Moldova – and countries like Brazil, Thailand, Vietnam and United Arab Emirates.
“One of the most important threats of the past year were the ransomware programs, which affected both individual users and small and medium enterprises – which are the majority in Romania – and institutions. The problem is especially serious for SMEs, as they do not have a clear security policy, no dedicated budgets, as opposed to large companies,” Tanase explains.
According to him, estimates for this year show that ransomware programs will remain one of the main cyber threats both in Romania and worldwide.
The ever more sophisticated techniques hinder financial institutions’ mission to distinguish between an attack and normal activity of clients: nearly 40 percent of financial organizations admit this, according to a Kaspersky Lab and B2B International study. Last but not least, financial phishing had in 2016 the largest share of the total phishing attacks recorded by domestic systems so far.
“In this context, from the perspective of companies and other institutions, the challenge is to have a well-trained IT staff and the other employees to be aware that, through their behavior, they can affect the safety of the entire network,” Stefan Tanase stated.
The same study reveals that more than two in five (43 percent) businesses, who were victim to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on their IT system, believe their competitors were behind it.
Rival firms are considered more likely culprits than cybercriminals, which were cited as suspects by fewer than two in five (38 percent) victims.
Kaspersky Lab’s 2016 IT Security Risks study, found that industrial sabotage was considered to be the most likely reason behind a DDoS attack, coming out higher than political conspiracy and personal vendettas against a business.