Friday 29 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR: Almost 70% of all commercial crimes committed in Malaysia are cybercrimes, which have surpassed drug trafficking as the most lucrative crime,  costing more than RM1 billion in losses in 2013, said IDC Financial Insights research director Chew Li May.

“In Asia-Pacific, organised crime will account for US$138 billion (RM500 billion) in enterprise losses,” Chew told The Edge Financial Daily during the recently concluded Asian Financial Services Congress (AFSC 2015) in Singapore.

She cited attacks on computer hardware and software, as well as financial crimes and corruption such as online fraud and phishing as examples of cybercrimes.

“Incidents of cybercrime rose 6.3% to more than 10,600 cases in 2013, with the highest increment coming from malicious codes. Globally, 18 people per second or 1.5 million victims fall into the cybercrime trap daily, translating into 565 million victims yearly, with 232.4 million identities exposed,” she said.

To combat cybercrime, Chew said enterprises worldwide are spending US$2.1 billion on web security this year, of which some 50.9% will be on appliances, 28.5% on software and 20.9% for software as a service (SaaS).

SaaS, which is sometimes referred to as “on-demand software”, is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the Internet.

“It is inevitable that enterprises take a concerted move toward preventive solutions rather than reactive and corrective. We expect expenditure to move at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.7% to US$2.5 billion in 2018,” she said.

Chew said 68% or US$23.5 billion of worldwide information technology (IT) security products spending in 2015 will be on secured content and threat management to counter spyware, viruses, hackers, intrusions and confidential information disclosure.

Of this, she said US$9.7 billion has been earmarked for end-point security management to enforce security policies for mobile or remote workers and address security within personal own devices.

On IT security products, Chew said IDC forecasts total revenue to reach US$34.9 billion this year and US$42.8 billion in 2018, which represents a five-year CAGR of 6.9%.

Chew noted that rising Internet utilisation — 41% of the population has online access — has opened up avenues for cybercriminals, with 1.5 billion potential cybervictims in Asia-Pacific.

“These attacks are done via various channels such as search engine poisoning, fake emails and phishing campaigns. This has prompted the industry to boost the deployment of IT security solutions across the extended financial enterprise,” she said.

Chew added that to counter the rising cybersecurity threats, it has been suggested that Malaysian banks employ a unified security solution that brings together both on-premises appliances and virtualised security services to protect both static and mobile workers, wherever they are, and on whichever devices they are using.

“This is critical as workforces are increasingly mobile and employees may be using personal devices to access corporate resources, so enterprises do need to engage a solution that adapts to the user’s environment. These have to be in real-time and not static as threats are evolving at lighting speed.”

 

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on April 20, 2015.

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