Q8NRI.com

Kuwait – Infected personal computers in the Middle East region saw a 116 per cent increase in less than a year across the Gulf Cooperation Council with businesses and individuals failing to take adequate security precautions.

In April this year, there were more than 740,097 infected machines, making the GCC region one of the most vulnerable geographies in the globe to Internet content security problems, according to a latest report by Internet content security provider, Trend Micro in its latest report released yesterday.

This is part of a historical trend of high compromise of systems in the GCC region. From 2004 to 2009, the region saw an astonishing 8,140 per cent rise in the number of infected machines.

Saudi Arabia was the most affected during the period with the number of active and infected machines growing by a staggering 45,072 per cent. Bahrain saw an infection rate of 6,047 per cent while the rate of infection in the United Arab Emirates grew by 4,553 per cent during the period.

In Kuwait, it grew by 1,545 per cent, Qatar 4,468 percent and Oman 8,921 per cent for the same period.

“The numbers of compromised machines are a key indicator of how well the cyber criminals are doing in stealing from this region. The visible infections have more than doubled in less than one year. The bad guys are winning because in this region we are not taking security seriously,” said Ian Cochrane, Marketing Manager, Med, Middle East and Africa.

“I see this growth continuing unless we start to recognise that this region is vulnerable and we start to take steps to protect ourselves,” he said.

“Our dependence on the Web raises our vulnerability and most of us are not even aware of our machines being compromised. Protecting ourselves on the Internet does not have to be complex. We just need to use professional security software that can also block threats, regular scanning and exercise personal caution,” said Dave Rand, Chief Technology Officer, Trend Micro.

K.V.S.Madhav – Bahrain Tribune