Kaspersky unveiled its Kaspersky Extended Detection and Response platform which aims to mitigate the costly threat of targeted ransomware for businesses in Viet Nam in HCM City earlier this week.

Ransomware – the malware that locks a device or files – continues to evolve in quality and quantity. Last year, the global cybersecurity company noted the almost two-fold (181 per cent) increase in ransomware encountered daily, which translates to 9,500 encrypting files per day globally.

The malicious actors behind these attacks also continue to sharpen their tactics and tools to earn more.

There has been a rise of targeted ransomware groups who have added other extortion methods – reselling the data or files they have hacked, conducting DDoS attacks against their victim or the victim’s customers, or using the same data to conduct follow-up attacks like targeted phishing. These are dubbed Ransomware 3.0.

For Southeast Asia, the latest data from Kaspersky revealed Lockbit is the most prolific targeted ransomware which attacked 115 unique businesses in the region. These enterprises are users of Kaspersky’s B2B solutions; hence these incidents were foiled.

Its fresh statistics revealed that a total of 304,904 ransomware attacks eyeing businesses here have been blocked by Kaspersky’s business solutions last year. Of the total, Viet Nam recorded 57,389 attacks during the period.

“Malicious actors, like Lockbit ransomware group, invest considerable time in up-front intelligence gathering to determine who they will target, how they will target them, and the optimal timing of their attack. This level of pre-planning makes attacks more sophisticated and therefore harder to catch. Combine this with their double and now the emerging triple-extortion models, modern targeted ransomware groups are set to disrupt more enterprises in SEA if we are not equipped enough to nip them on the bud,” warned Yeo Siang Tiong, general manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky.

To help the overwhelmed and undermanned enterprise security teams, Kaspersky consolidated its multiple security tools into a coherent, unified security incident detection and response platform – Kaspersky Extended Detection and Response (XDR), he said.

“This new platform provides multi-layer protection for enterprises, as well as threat hunting capabilities for their existing Security Operations Centre,” he said.

XDR promises adaptability for organisations of all shapes and sizes. — VNS