TRENDING

We spoke to Raj Samani , McAfee Fellow and Chief Scientist , to gather his thoughts on the findings .

Were you surprised by the threat activity figures from Q1 2020 ?

The slow pick up was perhaps a little surprising , but really , from about mid- March , I don ’ t think the volume was that unexpected . Perhaps more surprising was the geographies that were targeted – for some time , the most targeted country for malicious files , using COVID as a lure , was Spain and that was unexpected .

Was there anything that could have been done differently to avoid victims ’ data being stolen ?

Well , all of the metrics we presented were stopped . In fact , on malicious files alone , we stopped well over a million files that were intended to infect / defraud its victims .

Why do you think attacks in the Americas increased , while those in Europe decreased ?

In part , the US generally is one of the territories that is targeted more often . However , we also have to consider that unlike many other countries , it does have relatively mature reporting , so any attacks / breaches themselves can be identified and counted .

How do you predict the findings to change , moving forward ?

The use of COVID as a lure is already fragmenting . We are now seeing attackers take advantage of some of the indirect consequence of the pandemic .

For example , attackers are using the economic situation to bait individuals into clicking on links to malicious sites , under the guise that they will be able to claim stimulus cheques .

Also , with more of us streaming content to our homes , we are seeing an uptick in phishing lures claiming that accounts have been suspended . •

26 INTELLIGENTCIO www . intelligentcio . com