KUALA LUMPUR: The retail industry experienced the greatest number of cyberattacks in Asia Pacific (APAC) in the past 24 months, said global cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.
In a statement, the company said this was due to insufficient distribution of the cybersecurity budget, leading to 19 per cent of Asian companies in its latest survey enduring cyberattacks.
“Retail organisations suffered the greatest number of cyber breaches because of the lack of budget (37 per cent), followed by telecommunication companies (33 per cent) and critical infrastructure, energy, oil and gas sector (23 per cent),” it said.
Meanwhile, Kaspersky said the financial services industry was considered the most successful industry in terms of proper monetary distribution for cybersecurity in the region.
Its managing director for APAC Adrian Hia noted that e-commerce was expected to be a US$2 trillion (US$1=RM4.66) market in Asia Pacific towards the end of 2023.
“Retail being the industry which suffered most cyber incidents here makes sense as cybercriminals follow the money trail.
“These companies are part of the greater digitalisation movement in the region and hold treasure troves of data, specifically financial ones,” he said.
Hence, Hia urged all industries in the region, especially those that handle critical information, to allocate a better cybersecurity budget to ensure the safety of their businesses and, most importantly, of their customers’ sensitive data.
In this study, Kaspersky surveyed 234 respondents from APAC to discover the opinions of information technology security professionals regarding the human impact on cybersecurity in a company.
The full report of this study is available on its website at https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/human-factor-360-report-2023/. –Bernama
