Financial Phishing: A Growing Threat to Businesses in Southeast Asia

Phishing is a prevalent form of cybercrime that works by using carefully crafted emails or notifications to trick users into giving up their payment or personal details or downloading malicious programs. Financial phishing is a type of phishing that targets payment systems and e-shops, and it is a growing problem in Southeast Asia. In 2022, Kaspersky blocked a total of 822,536 financial phishing attempts targeted at companies in the region. Indonesia had the highest number of incidents, followed by Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Singapore.

Businesses are particularly vulnerable to phishing attacks because they are made up of humans, and phishing is a type of social engineering attack. Cybercriminals know that the workforce is a loophole they can exploit easily to launch a cyberattack against a company. Phishing email is usually the first chapter of 91% of all cyberattacks, and workers tend not to notice pitfalls hidden in emails devoted to corporate issues and online delivery problem notifications. A phishing simulation by Kaspersky showed that almost one in five workers clicked the link in the email templates imitating these phishing attacks.

To prevent complex attacks and any related financial and reputational losses caused by phishing attacks, Kaspersky recommends the following for businesses: reminding employees about the basic signs of phishing emails, checking the format of attachments before opening them and the link accuracy before clicking, always reporting phishing attacks, supplying employees with basic cybersecurity knowledge, and protecting working devices and enterprise perimeters with a holistic expert security like Kaspersky Extended Detection and Response (XDR) platform.

In summary, financial phishing is a growing problem in Southeast Asia, and businesses are particularly vulnerable to phishing attacks. To prevent complex attacks and any related financial and reputational losses caused by phishing attacks, Kaspersky recommends a range of measures, including reminding employees about the basic signs of phishing emails and protecting working devices and enterprise perimeters with expert security measures like Kaspersky Extended Detection and Response (XDR) platform.

21 March 2023