Bringing home the threat of cyberattacks

CYBERSECURITY Awareness Month in October promotes understanding of digital security and serves to remind everyone to protect their personal data against online crimes.

We would like to draw attention to the dangers of cyberattacks on individual consumers, businesses, government agencies and our critical infrastructure and essential services.

Most cyberattacks or data breaches start with phishing. In Singapore, we saw a rapid increase in phishing attempts with the rapid adoption of ecommerce applications and online banking throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the Singapore police, a total of SGD227.8mil was lost to the top 10 scam types, including phishing, in the first six months of this year.

According to our data, exposure to phishing increased 127% between Q4 2020 and Q1 2021. We also observed that the phishing encounter rate in Singapore is almost half, at 41.6%, across iOS and Android devices.

When phishing is used to steal login credentials, it opens up a world of possibilities for cybercriminals. With one set of credentials, bad actors can then try to log in to a number of common cloud-based services. Once they’ve successfully logged in, they can move laterally within an organisation and find highly sensitive and valuable information such as credit card numbers, bank account details, and personally identifiable information (PII) to either encrypt for ransom or sell on the dark web. The same is true for individual consumers, especially since it’s so common for people to use the same passwords across multiple accounts.

Phishing attacks have continued to evolve in techniques and sophistication, but the basic approach of trying to create a sense of urgency or impersonating a figure of trust has remained constant.

It’s important to take a step back and evaluate the situation. For organisations, it is critical that they implement proper security controls across mobile devices and hybrid environments to enforce Zero Trust.

DON TAN

Senior director

Lookout, Asia Pacific and Japan

Singapore