Cyber-attacks through mobiles has increased to 845% in India

A report says that the cyber attacks on employee’s mobile devices in India rose by 845% from 1,345 in October 2020 to 12,719 in March 2021, as remote working during the pandemic saw the mobile attack surface expand dramatically in the country.

While the total number of mobile attacks on Indian organisations in October 2020 was 1,345, it reached 12,719 firms in March this year, according to the Threat Intelligence Report from cybersecurity firm Check Point.

During 2020, the researchers discovered a highly significant attack, in which threat actors used a large international corporation's Mobile Device Management (MDM) system to distribute malware to more than 75 of its managed mobile devices.

Worldwide, 97 per cent of organisations surveyed faced mobile threats that used multiple attack vectors last year. While 46 per cent of organisations among those surveyed had at least one employee download a malicious mobile application, at least 40 per cent of the world's mobile devices are inherently vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Almost every organisation experienced at least one mobile malware attack in 2020. "Ninety-three percent of these attacks originated in a device network, which attempts to trick users into installing a malicious payload via infected websites or URLs, or to steal users' credentials," the findings showed.