IT looks like Malaysia is becoming a popular target among cyber criminals for the past year.
Based on Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report 2015, the country moves up to no 31 in 2015 from 33 in 2013 from over 157 countries worldwide.
The threat activities that hit the country include malicious code, spam, phishing, bot-infected computers and network and Web attacks. The US, China and India the the top targets of attacks from cyber criminals.
"We are seeing a dramatic shift in the mode of attacks. Attackers have stepped up their game by tricking companies into infecting themselves through Trojanised software updates, hiding their malware inside software updates of programs used by target organisations. This enables cyber criminals too gain full access to corporate networks without the need to make any forced entry," says Symantec, Malaysia and Thailand country director, Nigel Tan.
While no specific amount was revealed as to how much was lost by companies and individuals locally due to cyber attcks, Tan says cybercriminals are willing to pay between US$60-70 (RM218-254) for a single credit card information and buy Malware from up to US$3,000 (RM10,913) to initiate an attack.
"If they (the cyber criminals) are willing to fork out such amount, the return on their investment is much higher. A company would lose US$3.5 million (RM12.7 million) on average per security breach," he adds.
One of the big reasons of the high rate of cyber attacks in Malaysia is the sheer volume of connected devices that we have.
"Malaysia is getting more connected. MCMC reported that Malaysia now 60 per cent of smartphone penetration and this is on the rise," says Tan.
Symantec foresees that ATMs to continue to be primary target among cyber criminals while mobile payment would be new target of attacks, be it at the front-end or the back-end.