Cybercrime surge in Malaysia

PETALING JAYA: Cybercrime is growing in Malaysia, as statistics from CyberSecurity Malaysia show.

For example, fraud cases detected in cyberspace jumped 20% last year compared to 2015. Besides fraud, the top cyber crime were intrusion, spam and malicious code.

Data from Cybercrime Malaysia, an agency under the Science, Technology and Innovations Ministry, also show a total of 2,428 cybercrime incidences reported between January and April this year.

CyberSecurity Malaysia chief executive officer CEO Datuk Dr Amirudin Abdul Wahab pointed out that countering cyber crime will be increasingly challenging due to the exponential growth of connected devices.

According to market research company Gartner, there could be 20.4 billion Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices between now and 2020.

“When it comes down to adoption of IoT, we sleepwalk in the reality that somebody has secured it for us. With the connection of internet comes due diligence to use technology responsibly,” KPMG Malaysia head of cybersecurity Dani Michaux said.

The risks have been amplified by the interconnectivity of devices through IoT, say experts, who believe that the adoption of cyber security measures was slower than the advancement of technology.

The recent Wannacry malware attack is one example of a cybercrime that has hit 300,000 devices in 150 countries.
  
“The size of the organisation will reflect the amount of connectivity. The bigger the organisation, the more likely the company will be exposed to cyber attacks,” iboss Network Security senior vice president Simon Eappariello said.