It is not the first time that Italy finished in the lead European ranking of the countries most targeted by malware. It had happened in October 2020 according to the data in the possession of Trend Micro, when however, extending the observation period to the whole year, we were in seventh place in the world ranking. We are now first in Europe in 2021 and we also enter the world top 5 occupying the fourth box.
An undesirable record of which however it’s best to be aware to keep your guard up. The data emerges from Navigating New Frontiers, the Trend Micro Research report on cyber threats that characterized the past year. Globally, 2021 saw a sharp increase in attacks on infrastructure and systems for remote work, targeted by cloud systems that are often incorrectly configured and therefore vulnerable.
The Trend Micro report summed it up like this 2021 for Italy:
- malware – the total number of malware intercepted in Italy during the year was 62,371,693, while in 2020 they were practically a third, 22,640,386. Italy thus passes from the seventh to the fourth position of the most affected countries in the world and is first in Europe. The USA, Japan and India preceded us on the podium
- macro malware – once again Italy is the most affected country in Europe, seventh worldwide with 6,861 attacks received
- ransomware – Italy is the fourth most affected country in Europe, preceded by Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Worldwide we are twelfth
- the threats by email that hit Italy were over 336 million
- visits to malicious sites there were over 18 million. Those hosted in Italy and blocked were 269,383
- malicious apps – Download 51,103 malicious apps
- online banking – 3,478 unique online banking malware intercepted
Expanding the perspective to the whole world, however, a not very encouraging photograph emerges: Trend Micro has blocked 94 billion threats (70 billion of which have traveled by email), up by 42% compared to 2020.
