India witnesses 761 cyber threat detections per minute this year

India witnessed more than 400 million cyber threats across approximately 8.5 million endpoints in 2023, averaging 761 detections per minute, a report released on Wednesday said.

The relevation comes on the same day Indian IT major HCL Technologies said that one of its projects was hit by a ransomware attack in an isolated cloud environment and a probe was underway to understand the cause.

The report, conducted by the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) in partnership with Seqrite, also found that 49 million behavior-based detections made up 12.5% of the total detections According to the report, Surat and Bengaluru reported the highest number of detections, accounting for 15% and 14% respectively. Removable media and network drives were associated with over 50% of the detections, while nearly 25% of attacks resulted from clicking on malicious links in emails and websites. The report also highlighted that, on average, three attacks per month per Android device were observed in 2023, it said.

Vinayak Godse, CEO of DSCI, emphasized that malware continues to pose a significant threat, as cybercriminals develop increasingly complex attack methods. The report also revealed that fake and malicious applications hosted on the Google Play Store, such as SpyLoan apps and HidAdd apps, have been downloaded by millions of users.

Ransomware attacks, which evade traditional detection techniques, were found to be a growing threat. The report also identified cryptojacking as a significant concern, with over 5.28 million detections in one year. Trojans and infectors were found to be the most common types of attacks, accounting for 41% and 33% of the attack spectrum respectively.

The report had seen automobile industry experienced the highest number of detections, followed by the government and education sector.

A report published on November 6, showed that India’s state-sponsored cyber-attacks have increased by 278% between 2021 and September 2023. The report conducted by cybersecurity firm Cyfirma, found that services companies, including IT and BPO firms, were the most targeted, accounting for the highest share of attacks. The report also revealed that targeted cyber-attacks on government agencies rose by 460%, while startups and SMEs saw a staggering increase of 508%.

In a related report by Microsoft on October 6, India is highlighted as one of the top three targeted countries in the Asia Pacific region by nation-state actors.  Additionally, an October 10 report by Akamai notes a significant increase in cyber-attacks on the financial services sector in the Asia Pacific and Japan region, reporting a 36% growth in attacks from Q2 2022 to Q2 2023, totaling over 3.7 billion attacks.