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Egypt among most vulnerable to cyberattacks in MENA: Trend Micro

Security

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, has said that Egypt is seeing a sustained rise in threat activity

Based on a newly-released report, the company detected a total of 242,411 malwares in the country in the last quarter of 2017 alone, up by 25 per cent from the third quarter figure of 194,719.

This is the third highest malware threats in the African region, with the biggest figure of 2,289,997 malware files coming from South Africa, followed by Morocco’s 341,279. The same report revealed that the state’s manufacturing sector was the one most affected by malware, followed by education, government, real estate and technology.

The security experts are urging businesses, individuals and government entities to be more vigilant against cyberattacks, as the consequences can be devastating, this, according to Noura Hassan, managing director of Trend Micro North Africa and Levant.

“Egypt’s ICT sector outlook remains bullish, especially with its ICT 2030 Strategy aiming for a strong digital economy. The country has high internet penetration with over 30mn users and this will continue to grow with a rapidly-expanding tech-savvy workforce, as well as government-led programmes that are aimed at maximising the ICT contributions to the economic growth of the country,” added Hassan.

Trend Micro is strengthening its efforts to raise awareness on the importance of a layered approach to cybersecurity for Egyptian businesses, even as the security vendor predicts a significant rise in threats in the state in 2018.

In Q4 of 2017, Trend Micro blocked 70,612 malicious URLs being accessed by internet users in the country, while in the same period the number of times a malicious URL hosted in Egypt that was blocked by Trend Micro stood at 803. Also, in Q4, the number of email threats blocked via sender IP in the state stood at more than 27.7mn.

Ransomware is one of the biggest threats today, and Egypt is not immune to this threat. The global total for ransomware threats as of December 2017 is 1.7 billion, and this is the combined ransomware threats, for email, URL and files. Egypt registered the third highest level of ransomware threats in the African region, behind South Arica and Tunisia.

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