A 3,000 percent exponential growth in internet usage since 2000 has meant that more than 22.7 percent of the Kingdom's citizens are now prone to cyber crime today, Trend Micro said in a statement on Monday. In the first three months of 2009, Trend Micro has cleaned more than a million infected computers across the GCC, and 723,567 of those were in Saudis Arabia. The number of infected computers in the country is set to grow as spam peaks at 200 billion a day globally. “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has one of the highest number of internet usage in the Arab world, and Saudi individuals and businesses are prone to malicious web attacks that could be financially damaging,” said Chris Moore, regional managing director, Trend Micro Middle East and North Africa. “The time to protect is now; business can ill afford loss of productivity and data.” The threat environment today has evolved from mass notoriety worm outbreaks in 2001 to covert dangers in 2008. Most internet users are not aware that their PCs have been compromised. Any website from any organization is at risk, and the ones most targeted are those with compromised PCs. Customers need to know that when they link to a website, it is safe for them. That website's reputation can often be a key business differentiator. In the EMEA region, 56.90 percent of threats are downloaded from the internet; 51.72 percent are dropped silently by malware; whereas a staggering 22.41 percent of machines are affected by removable physical drives. Trend Micro is seeing similar behavior in the Middle East. “There have been some recent high profile security breaches in the region. Data-stealing malware is on the rise and infiltrates the most secure enterprises. Trend Micro is doing their share to educate regional organizations and individuals,” Moore noted. __
