Trend Micro, a global leader in Internet content security, has warned that 2010 has already witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of infected PCs in the Middle East, because businesses and individuals fail to take adequate security precautions.
The number of infected computers across the region is on the rise. In September of 2010, there were more than 800,297 infected machines that Trend Micro saw as active across the GCC - a 60 per cent rise in less than one year.
For the wider Middle East, the number of infected computers is also on the rise. So far in 2010, there were more than 2,072,114 infected machines that Trend Micro saw as active across the Middle East - a 112 per cent rise in the last seven years.
The UAE saw 91,439 infected machines in September, a jump of 33 per cent in less than one year. Infected machines as of September for the year stand at 419,471 a growth of nearly 10,000 percent from 2004, when the number stood at just 4,229.
“The numbers of compromised machines are a key indicator of how well the cyber criminals are doing in stealing from this region,” said Rik Ferguson, Security Advisor at Trend Micro.
“Visible infections have more than doubled in less than one year. The bad guys are winning because in this region we are not taking security seriously and I see this growth continuing unless we start to recognize that this region is vulnerable and we start to take steps to protect ourselves,” added Ferguson.
In September 2010, there were more than 421,998 machines compromised in Saudi Arabia, a jump of more than 65 per cent in less than one year.