is led by Ecuador, with an increase of 75%, followed by Peru (71%), Panama (60%), Guatemala (43%) and Venezuela (29%), according to the report based on data obtained from Kaspersky solutions installed by users in the region.
And although some companies in Brazil (56.25% of the total), Mexico (22.81%) and Colombia (10.20%) have made references to more cases, they are not considered the strongest; there are countries in Latin America that are much more vulnerable to attacks.
Expert figures show that, in this area, Argentina is also the least safe country, with a “very high” probability that a cybercriminal will target a company, followed by Mexico; while Peru is the least dangerous country and the attack is “half as likely to occur in Argentina.”
"The criminals did not spend anything to start the attack, so the extortion" is spreading in the region, maintains the Russian society, also warning about the vulnerabilities of remote connections and linking the increase in cases to difficult months: March and April, with a recovery again in September.
Experts also draw attention to risks to mobile devices, including Kaspersky, which recorded 1.2 million attacks this year in countries analyzed around 140,000 per month. Brazil, Peru and Colombia are the countries most likely to undergo a mobile attack, while Argentina and Mexico are the safest.
In particular, Brazil and Mexico have risen to the top of the list of countries causing the most man-made cyberattacks. They are currently third and fourth, behind the United States and Canada.
An example of a phishing network in Latin America is the numerous scammers targeting four banks and two payment gateways in Brazil, where more than $275,000 is being scammed. This network alone includes 1,600 devices, 9,300 email addresses, and 500 phone numbers.
E-commerce businesses have seen a slight uptick in digital payments, as well as significant attack patterns coinciding with the quarantine period. These attacks include account takeovers and other chargeback frauds.
Rafael Costa Abreu, Identity and Fraud Director for LexisNexis Risk Solutions for LATAM, said:
“Latin America has felt the impact of COVID-19 hard, as digital businesses continue to transform and evolve to meet the needs of an increasingly digital consumer base. However, this must not come at the expense of rising fraud. (…) We must identify and block fraudsters, whether opportunists or fraud networks, at the moment they transact. Knowledge sharing must be as critical to global businesses as it is to the cybercriminals who target them.”
