Italy was the European country most affected by malware attacks in 2022. The data emerges from the latest report by Trend Micro Research, the researchers of the cybersecurity company of the same name, who found that our country ranked first in Europe among the most affected by malware in April, May, June, July, September, October, November and December of last year.
Furthermore, in the last quarter of 2022, Italy was also third in the world, preceded only by Japan and the United States, for malware attacks.
In total, there were 247,040,439 malware-type threats affecting Italian users and businesses over the 12 months.
The data is the result of analyzes by the Smart Protection Network, Trend Micro's global intelligence network, made up of over 250 million sensors, which block an average of 65 billion threats per year, with a record 94 billion threats stopped in 2021. Malware is malicious programs and code that have the intent to breach, damage, or disable computers, systems, networks, tablets, and mobile devices, often by taking partial control of their operations.
Within them, the category of malware also includes the dreaded ransomware, which tends to encrypt files in the system, making them unreadable, and asking for payment to unlock them.
One of the methods for conveying malware remains the sending of fake emails, containing links to click or files to open, deliberately infected.
According to recent research by security firm Barracuda, 75% of organizations surveyed have experienced at least one successful email attack in the past 12 months, and among those affected, the average potential cost per costliest attack was over $1 million.
