Small businesses in Indian cities are becoming increasingly vulnerable to Bot infections. There is an increase in bot infections as a result of jump in the number of phishing and virus bearing spam mails, says the Symantec Corporations Interenet Security Threat Report, Volume 18 (India Findings).

“Primarily targeted at small businesses, Indian computer security is facing increasing  threat from  phishing  and virus bearing e-mails.69 cities including Bhubaneswar, Surat, Cochin, Jaipur,Vishakhapatnam, Indore, Kota, Ghaziabad and Mysore are susceptible to bot attacks. 15 percent of global bot-spam is coming from India that is approximately 280 million spam massages per day worldwide. Worldwide there is an increase of 42 percent in targeted attacks during 2012,” says the report

“Targeted attacks used for gaining access to confidential information or intellectual property on a compromised computer system or network recorded a global increase of 42% with  average number of  116 targeted attacks per day in 2012, 82 in 2011 and 77 in 2010. 27 percent of all attacks in 2012 were targeted at knowledge workers. IT industry being most vulnerable to spam, phishing and viruses  made  a large no of knowledge workers soft target for attacks. At 16% of the world’s total virus attacks, India ranks no. 2 behind United States and third for overall malicious code. 24 percent  attacks were targeted at Sales.”
“Designed to steal intellectual property, these targeted cyber espionage attacks are increasingly hitting small businesses as they are stepping stone to ultimately reaching larger companies.  With a three fold increases in attack on small businesses since 2012; small businesses are the target of 31percent of all attacks. Lack of adequate security practices and necessary infrastructure  increase  their vulnerability to attacks,” the report adds.

One in 661 emails was a phishing email and one in 248 emails carries a virus for larger enterprises. One in 4,751 emails  was a phishing email and one in 1,611 carries a virus.

Cautioning on mobile phone attacks, the report predicts 2013 to be a  watershed year  for mobile malware and says that 72 percent of Indian mobile businesses faced mobility incidents due to malware infections, spams, information  exposure, breach of information due to lost/stolen devices and phishing /social engineering instances.

“There  has been  an increase of 58percent mobile malware last year and half of the mobile malware created in 2012 attempted to steal information or track movements,” says the report.

Pointing to the fact that this year’s ISTR shows a clear focus among  cyber criminals at targeting individuals, systems and organisations  for making high profits , Anand Naik, managing director-sales, India& SAARC, Symantec said,  “India continues to rank high in the list for even the most basic threats. There  is an urgent need for improved awareness levels and security measures even as the country’s adoption of internet and mobile technologies is on rise.”