PETALING JAYA, June 1 — Malaysia’s cyber risk level has improved as the rating shifted to ‘moderate risk’ in the second half of 2022 (2H 2022) from ‘elevated risk’ in the first half of last year (1H 2022), according to Trend Micro Incorporated.
Trend Micro vice-president of Southeast Asia and India Nilesh Jain said the positive shift was attributable to improvements in cyber preparedness.
Despite that, he said local organisations remained on guard with the majority of them expecting to experience a breach in customer data, intellectual property or successful cyberattacks this year.
Based on the latest biannual Cyber Risk Index (CRI) report, Nilesh said organisations in Malaysia and the Asia Pacific (APAC) cited ransomware, clickjacking, phishing and social engineering, crypto-mining and advanced persistent threats as the top five cyber threats they expect to experience this year.
“Cyber risk management will need to be a key priority for organisations across APAC. It is the most important thing today because most of the chief information officers and chief information security officers (CISOs) end up investing millions of dollars in cybersecurity products and most of them bought it without realising the risk profiling.
“Risk profiling has to be done first, the risk appetite has to be accessed and risk resilience services need to be done,” he told the media after sharing the CRI report, earlier today.
In the report, Trend Micro said cyber risk levels in APAC had improved in 2H 2022 versus 1H 2022, but many organisations remained pessimistic about the threat landscape, anticipating successful attacks this year.
Nilesh noted there has been a drastic improvement in the cyber risk index for APAC since 1H 2022, with (rating) figures moving into the positive territory at 0.05 from the negative levels.
“This is a promising result as it means that organisations have greatly stepped up to improve their cyber preparedness.
“It is crucial for organisations to continue this momentum by focusing on the threats that matter most to their business this year.
“The first step is to gain complete and continuous attack surface visibility and control in the ongoing effort to better manage cyber risks,” he added.
As a background, Trend Micro’s biannual CRI report measures the gap between respondents’ cybersecurity preparedness versus their likelihood of being attacked.
In 2H 2022, the CRI surveyed more than 3,700 CISOs, information technology practitioners and managers across North America, Europe, Latin and South America, and APAC.
— Bernama
