Businesses Facing Great Threat from Cyber Criminals in Saudi Arabia

As per the security researchers at Trend Micro, cyber threats in Saudi Arabia are significantly rising. From January to March 2009, Trend Micro removed malicious codes from almost 1 Million infected systems across the GCC region and out of those 723,567 were in Saudi Arabia.

The amount of infected computers in Saudi Arabia will grow as spam reaches 200 Billion per day worldwide.

While giving reason for the momentous growth in cyber crime, security experts have explained that Saudi Arabia has witnessed a strong growth in web usage. Trend Micro said on May 4, 2009 that a 3,000% exponential growth in web usage since 2000 indicated that over 22.7% of the citizens in the Kingdom were vulnerable to cyber crime.

Chris Moore, Regional Managing Director, Trend Micro for the region of North Africa and the Middle East, states that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia has one of the highest number of web usage in the Arab world, and their industries and individuals are more prone to web attacks that could be financially destructive, as reported by Saudi Gazette on May 5, 2009.

Security Researchers also inform that the threat landscape has expanded from mass infamy outbreaks in 2001 to hidden threats during 2008. They also reveal that many web users do not come to know that their systems have been infected.

Security experts claim that any website from any company is at danger and the ones most attacked are those hosted at hacked systems. Hence, users should understand that when they access a website, it is not certain that the site is safe.

Besides, Trend Micro also discovers that in the EMEA area, 56.90% of cyber threats emerge from the web, 51.72% come silently with malware and an astounding 22.41% of computers are attacked by detachable physical drives. Trend Micro has also observed similar trends in the Middle East.

Moreover, there have been some latest high profile online security breaches in the Middle East. Data stealing malware increases and creeps into the safest firms. Therefore, security experts add that it is urgent to educate the users about cyber threats so that they can avoid deceived by attackers.

Related article: Businesses Asked To Shoulder Security Of Online Transactions

» SPAMfighter News - 5/8/2009