BANGALORE: India has become a key threat frontier, ranking as third in the overall malicious activities, according to Symantec’s annual internet security report.

5.1 percent of the entire malevolent are derived from India in 2013, the security software maker said. In terms of spam generation India’s position was first, whereas it became second on the malicious code generation.

Symantec’s annual report shares worldwide trends in cyber attacks, as per the data collected from company’s intelligence network that include 41.5 million attack sensors.

 “There has been a significant shift in cyber criminal behaviors, revealing the bad guys are plotting for months before pulling off huge heists, instead of executing quick hits with smaller rewards,” said Tarun Kaura, Director, Symantec India.

As revealed by the annual report, the country was not only in the forefront of initiating cyber attacks but was at the receiving end, as well. During 2013, over 69 percent of the targeted attacks in India were focused largely on enterprises, where the 66 percent of email traffic at these companies were spams. In 2013 there was a remarkable raise in small enterprises becoming an easy target for internet attacks. 30 percent of the total targeted attacks were mainly focused on small enterprises worldwide.

Unlike previous years, where the cyber attacks were focused on banking, insurance sector, and financial services in India, in 2013 large amount of attacks was on non-traditional industries such as manufacturing and hospitality. “It’s not that BFSI saw a decline in attacks. But the number of attacks in the new sectors increased,” Kaura said.

Non-traditional sectors explained almost 40 percent of the total amount of attacks, whereas 33.33 percent of the attacks were mainly on manufacturing fields. BFSI explained 11.11 per cent of the total attacks in 2013.

“Small- and medium-sized businesses often have less adequate security practices and resources,” the report said. “Attackers are increasingly targeting small businesses that have relationships with larger ones.”

Moreover, the nature of information stolen in the attacks also changed worldwide, along with the targeted details of attackers such as name, addresses, date of birth, medical reports, and social security numbers, corresponding to the financial details in previous years.

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