Australia, NZ and Singapore in cybercriminal firing line

Australia, New Zealand and Singapore are firmly in the firing line for hackers and cybercriminals, according to cloud security firm Zscaler who says it is blocking more than 1.5 million pieces of malware every week.

The Zscaler ThreatLabZ research team examined a variety of threats targeting the region, including phishing attacks, botnets, browser exploitation, and malicious content.

Forty-two per cent of the attacks blocked in the region were aimed at Australian enterprises, while Singaporean organisations were the target of a further 35% of attacks, and the remaining 23% were directed at New Zealand organisations.

Botnets are often designed to steal data and immobilise organisations by infecting them with malicious software, and Zscaler detected 150,000 botnets across the region per week. Seventy-three per cent of detected botnet attacks were aimed at Singaporean organisations and 26% at those in Australia. Just 1% were aimed at New Zealand organisations.

"Cybercriminals continue to develop new, more sophisticated attack methods, and they are carrying them out with astonishing frequency," says Zscaler country manager, Budd Ilic.

"Enterprises in the Asia Pacific region need to partner with cloud providers that provide inline inspection of all traffic, including encrypted traffic at scale, to reduce the likelihood of falling victim to a costly and damaging incursion," he says.
 
The Zscaler security cloud processes more than 65 billion daily transactions and detects and prevents 125 million threats worldwide. To protect customers with the latest threat prevention, the cloud receives 120,000 unique security updates per day.

Zscaler enables organisations to securely transform their networks and applications for a mobile and cloud-first world. Its flagship services, Zscaler Internet Access and Zscaler Private Access create fast, secure connections between users and applications, regardless of device, location, or network.

Zscaler services are 100% cloud-delivered and are used in more than 185 countries across the globe. Zscaler operates a multi-tenant distributed cloud security platform, protecting thousands of customers from cyberattacks and data loss.