The digital minefield: Kaspersky experts share insights on cyberthreat agenda at Cybersecurity Weekend 

Experts from Kaspersky discussed the biggest cyberthreats specifically targeting governments, enterprises, businesses and industrial organizations while forecasting trends that will influence the cybersecurity landscape in future, at Kaspersky’s 8th annual Cyber Security Weekend – META 2023, held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, last week.

The impact of Artificial Intelligence, compromised corporate data on the Darknet, risks carried by deepfakes as well as critical industry-specific threats – all these topics were discussed during the conference. Special attention was put on Kaspersky’s Cyber Immunity approach as a way to create solutions that are virtually impossible to compromise and that minimize the number of potential vulnerabilities.

“Considering how quickly the threat landscape is expanding its boundaries and the number of new devices appearing in users’ daily lives, it’s not surprising that we were detecting over 400,000 malicious files per day and this number is growing year by year,” comments Dr. Amin Hasbini, Head of Global Research & Analysis Team (GReAT) for META, at Kaspersky. “It is crucial for individuals, businesses, and governments to take proactive steps to protect their systems and data from these evolving threats. This includes implementing strong cybersecurity measures, staying vigilant against emerging threats, and keeping up to date with the latest security trends and best practices.”

A gradual rise in phishing attacks

Diving deeper into social engineering cyberattacks, Kaspersky shared insights on phishing attacks which are most common in the META region. Comparing Q1 2022 to Q1 of 2023, Egypt (49%), UAE (33%), Qatar (88%), Oman (28%), Kuwait (27%) and Bahrain (20%) saw an increase in phishing attacks on users. On the other hand, phishing attacks in Saudi Arabia saw a slight decrease of 1% in Q1 of 2023 as compared to the same time period in 2022.

In the African region, phishing attacks grew in South Africa (7%), Nigeria (53%) and Kenya (87%) in Q1 of 2023 as compared to Q1 of 2022. Turkey (53%) witnessed an 53% increase in Q1 of 2023 as opposed to Q1 2022.