'1 in 3 Indian PC home users at high risk of cyber attack'

Nearly one third (28.22 per cent) of PC home users in India are at high risk of cyber attacks, according to a report by digital security and privacy provider Avast.

Avast's latest Global PC Risk Report also looked into the possibility of users facing aadvanced' threats -- defined as more sophisticated or threats never seen before, designed to bypass common protection technologies included in security software, such as signatures, heuristics, emulators, URL filtering, and email scanning.

For this type of threat, Indian home users have a 5.78 per cent risk ratio, which is higher than the global average.

Home users around the world have a 29.39 per cent chance of encountering any type of PC malware, which represents an increase of around 5 per cent compared to the previous year.

Geographies with more conflictive socio-political situations, such as the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, seem to be facing more risk in the online world as well.

"The risk ratio has increased worldwide for all malware attacks, and we can see that India is no exception. In the pandemic, the internet has been kind of a 'life saver' for many, empowering them to stay connected with loved ones during the lockdown, to attend virtual workout sessions, get togethers, classes, and work remotely," said Michal Salat, Director of Threat Intelligence at Avast, in a statement.

"But cybercriminals have also taken notice of this, and so we have seen a variety of tailored campaigns taking advantage of increased online activities, such as Covid-19 related attacks, sextortion campaigns, spyware, and ransomware," Salat added.

The data included in this report is collected from Avast's threat detection network, and represents a data snapshot, constructed with the threats Avast protected its PC users between March 16 and April 14, 2021.