Canada is one of top countries in the world most affected by malware and phishing, according to a report from a San Diego-based security vendor.
The biggest cyber-security threat faced by businesses over the past year has been malicious software embedded on legitimate Web sites, according to Websense Security Labs rays it its 2013 threat report released today. The number of Web sites infected with malware shot up worldwide by 600 per cent and in North America by 720 per cent, with 85 per cent of those sites hosted on legitimate Web servers.
All those new malware outposts equate to an organization facing an average of 1,719 attacks for every 1,000 users it supports, according to the report. Canada might be a smaller country than those most hit by malware, but is still among the most affected in the world overall. Canada is ranked at the 10th most popular place to host malware, and the 8th most commonly targeted country by cyber criminals. More often than not, those targets were businesses or governments, or about 70 per cent of time time, Websense says.
Phishing, or trying to lure contacts into giving up information by sending fraudulent e-mails, also continued to be a problem, according to the report. Canada is the third-most common country to host phishing sources, following the United States and the Bahamas.
Overall, the Websense report shows that hackers are continuing to use well-known methods of attack and there are no shortage of scammers pretending to be Nigerian princes that need your banking information to transfer a large sum of riches. But the expanding volume makes it more likely that you’ll be a victim if your company hasn’t put proper protections in place and worked to educate users about identifying suspicious e-mail requests and Web site behaviours.
Source | Websense 2013 Threat Report