Cybercrimes and phishing, or emails aimed at stealing your online banking passwords, are on the rise following the global financial meltdown.
A report by MessageLabs, a security services company, has revealed that phishing attacks rose 16 per cent between August and September this year.
"This phenomenon has affected GCC and the UAE banks as their current security infrastructure are compromised," said Gareth Palmer, sales manager at Computerlinks, the sole distributor for MessageLabs in the GCC and North Africa.
The current financial turmoil has added to the phishing incidents.
"Employees becoming spammers is a common issue but has come in the limelight more now. Many of them don't even know that they are doing anything wrong which can also mean transferring your files to the hotmail address," said Palmer. "The highest number of phishing happened during the recently-held Olympics at Beijing in China."
"At least 78 per cent of hacking are carried out within an organisation by internal users. They are either unaware or are unhappy and are able to access company information through the internal network or through external hard drives," said Ian Cochrane, regional marketing manager from Trend Micro.
These incidents have increased the Internet threat level in the region, which has reached an alarming proportion, with 70 per cent of Middle East users under attack on a daily basis.
Trend Micro, a specialist in content security software and services, conducted a survey of GCC-based organisation and individuals.
Out of the 500 GCC respondents surveyed, 81 per cent checked personal emails at work and 54 per cent checked their personal financial data online. The survey also shows that 87 percent of IT departments rely on basic protection.
Though phishing has increased, spam and virus levels have decreased, according to the MessageLabs report.
While the number spam decreased by 70 per cent in September, a decrease of eight per cent since August, and viruses fell by 38 per cent.
"As the Messagelabs report indicates it is mainly because of the shutting down of the California-based ISP Intercage which was disconnected from the Internet on September 20. Intercage was providing a safe-haven for online scammers, cyber crooks and malware distributors. August and September are also holiday months due to which spam levels are low. Spam levels will go back to peak time during Christmas," said Palmer.
In the current economic condition, the most popular spam emails were on the subject of finance, offering personal loans, etc. Advertisements came in as the second most popular category, health and medicine third and adult content fourth, according to security vendor Mcafee's report.
On a global level, the UAE ranks fourth in the list of countries with the highest attack of spams and viruses.
Palmer attributed this to geographical location and basic IT infrastructure.
"It is also a perception problem as it is believed that there is lower risk in the region," said Cochrane.
Having the right tools for a secure web world is crucial, and with 82 percent of users relying only on software for protection, more needs to be done to educate users, said the report. Web threats are deployed to a PC without the user's implicit knowledge and permission, and, with 72 per cent of employees browsing websites not directly related to work, the chances of downloading malicious software are highly increased.
Unprotected hot spots are particularly dangerous, and the study shows that 73 per cent of employees use laptops outside of work, increasing the chances of infection.
In September, spam levels in Hong Kong rose by 13.2 per cent, the largest increase, to reclaim its place as the most spammed country with levels reaching 79.7 per cent of all emails. However, many countries experienced decrease in spam levels – for example, spam in Oman fell by 16.7 per cent, the highest decrease this month, said the report.
Spam levels in the US reached 72.4 per cent in September, 68.4 per cent in Canada and 66 per cent in the UK. Germany's spam rate reached 65.4 per cent and 66.1 per cent in the Netherlands. Spam levels in Australia were 72.6 per cent, 75.2 per cent in China and 70.6 per cent in Japan.
With an increase of 1.07 per cent, the manufacturing sector became the most spammed industry sector, with a spam rate of 78.7 per cent. The largest increase was noted in the realty sector, where spam levels rose by 4.09 per cent to 71.7 per cent. The greatest drop was noted in the automotive sector where spam fell by 0.66 per cent to 68.9 per cent.
Chemical and pharmaceutical sectors' spam levels reached 71.6 per cent, 72.5 per cent in retail, 70.1 per cent in public sector and 65 per cent in finance.
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