How costly could cybersecurity threats get?

A recent study by Vietnam’s Bach Khoa Antivirus Center (Bkav) found out that the country suffered a staggering loss of $1 billion (24 trillion Vietnamese Dong) due to cyberattacks.

Carried out in December 2020, the study revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic has much to do with the financial loss. As organisations and employees in Vietnam continue to work remotely, due to restrictions placed on travel, as well as social distancing norms, cyber criminals have lapped up this opportunity. They have got into home as well as enterprise devices and have infiltrated, altered, and stole data.

Major e-commerce platforms and banking institutions in Southeast Asia are continuing to be hit hard by cyber threats, with personal information of thousands of users being stolen.

Supply chain attacks on Vietnamese businesses are also common. Such attacks target a product’s manufacturing line by installing hardware-based spying components, resulting in significant financial losses.

On top of that, Bkav’s threat detection system picks up over 15,000 spywares installed in smartphones monthly. These are also to steal sensitive information and private messages from smartphone users in Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh wants to stop cybercrime

This is perhaps why Vietnam’s largest city, Ho Chi Minh has set up a cybercrime division to combat such threats. A real-time malware detector website is also launched to remove any threats immediately.

However, Bkav’s Vice President of Anti-Malware, Vu Ngoc Son, pointed out the existence of fileless malware threats that hide in a system’s configuration parameters. As they leave no sign of presence, they are likely to still threaten many businesses in Vietnam, he said.