Kaspersky Lab: Quarter of Georgian users were subject to cyber-attacks in 2016

Friday, March 10

Kaspersky Lab has determined that one in seven users suffered from cyber-attacks in 2016 – such as malicious programs, hacker attacks, frauds like fake and fishing web-pages, spam and other threats. In addition, one in four Georgian users was subjected to so-called local threats – malicious objects transferred through removable devices (such as USB flash drives). Kaspersky Lab acquired this data from the study of internal statistics of 2016, collected with the help of Kaspersky Security Network* Cloud Infrastructure.

On average, a personal computer user in Georgia comes across Internet threats eight times within a year and local malicious programs approximately 42 times in a year, five times more than usual Internet threats. Consequences of such attacks include risk of losing important information – usernames and passwords for email, social network accounts, online access to bank accounts, family photo archives, and many other risks. Some malicious programs are directly designed to steal users’ money. According to Kaspersky Lab estimates**, on average the sum of stolen money from a user amounts to $500 per year globally.

As for mobile devices, five percent of users in Georgia have been affected by mobile malware. The most widely used programs that endanger the data safety of smartphones is the mobile banking Trojan, Svpeng. This malware is capable of harvesting the financial data from users’ bank accounts to steal money.

As described by Kaspersky Lab Regional Representative in Armenia and Georgia, Armen Karapetyan, “Cyber-threats are developing rapidly: daily number of threats increases, they become more and more evolved which makes it difficult to get ahead of them. Thus nowadays it is impermissible to ignore computer-security related issues. To stay protected, we strongly recommend that users be vigilant when using the Internet or even working offline. Nevertheless, even the high level of awareness about cyber-threats cannot completely protect from it. This is precisely why each device must be installed with anti-malware advanced programs capable of protecting even from unknown threats not developed yet by cyber-criminals.”

Nowadays, not only regular users may suffer from cyber threats, but also business entities, enterprises, financial organizations and state structures. In this case cyber-criminals’ target becomes stealing of money or confidential information critical for organizations’ undisturbed operations. Kaspersky Lab provides solutions to ensure a high level of safety and protection from cyber threats for both regular users and businesses. Thus, Kaspersky Internet Security for all devices protects users, and its complex protection platform, Kaspersky Total Security for businesses, provides companies with protection from all types of cyber threats.

* Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) is a cloud infrastructure connecting Kapsersky Lab product users worldwide. With the consent of the user, KSN collects and delivers to centralized servers any information about an attempt of malware infection, suspicious activities on millions of user devices which are protected by our company product. Along with this data, other information is supplied from many other sources. Therefore, with the help of this infrastructure we deliver continuous monitoring of malwares and viruses on the Internet. As soon as any malware attempts to infect any computer, this information will immediately be conveyed to Kaspersky Lab experts, the program will get corresponding status, and information about this threat will be distributed to all users, thus eliminating any further infection attempts. **The study was conducted by B2B International upon the request of Kaspersky Lab in August, 2016. During the survey 12,546 Internet users from 21 countries were interviewed.