Five African Nations Acquire Prominence for Cyber-Attacks

CheckPoint in its new study states that during November 2016, five African countries made it to the list of ten most attacked nations. This was when cyber-criminals increasingly launched ransomware assaults with Cryptowall and Locky ransomware strains that destruct up to half the data. Vanguardngr.com posted this December 28, 2016.

The index of potential threat that CheckPoint has computed is on the back of threat intelligence the security company obtained from a mapping exercise it did in ThreatCloud World Cyber Threat Map that traces cyber-assaults' mode and place of execution globally within real time.

This' still more prominent since interested entities within Nigeria's broadcasting and ICT sectors along with the country's combined information as well as communications technology lately indicated to the Federal Government for thinking about making October the month of countrywide cyber-security awareness inclining to worldwide best practices while making it an immediate national priority.

As evident from the study, the Locky ransomware disseminates chiefly through spam mails having one downloader camouflaging certain Zip/Word file attached to the e-mails. This downloader pulls down and plants the malware designed for encrypting all files on the end-user's system. Incidentally, Locky ranked No.1 among the total malware groups within the maximum number of countries which comprised 34 nations in comparison with Conficker the malware that attacked the most within 28 nations.

The trend emphasized that threat from ransomware continued to increase for corporate networks while indicated that numerous organizations were just agreeing to pay ransoms for getting back their locked files. Thus, ransomware attacks formed an alluring and profitable medium of assault for cyber-crooks.

According to CheckPoint Software Technologies' Area Manager Rick Rogers for East & West Africa, ransomware assaults continue to increase in volume just because they're easy to execute and generate considerable income for the cyber-criminals. Companies work hard for counteracting these malware attacks; plenty just do not have appropriate security safeguards, while also lack educated staff who would know the ways for recognizing potential ransomware assaults within inbound e-mails.

CheckPoint offers its SandBlast Zero-Day Protection, Threat Extraction, and Mobile Threat Prevention software for enabling organizations to be adequately secured from the most recent malware.

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