Brazil is the second country that suffers the most cyber attacks in Latin America
This is a machine translation of Fortinet‘s press release
São Paulo, August 18, 2022 – Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in comprehensive, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, released data collected in the first half of 2022 by its threat intelligence lab, FortiGuard Labs .
Brazil suffered 31.5 billion attempted cyber attacks from January to June this year – a 94% increase over the same period last year (with 16.2 billion) – being the second most targeted country in Latin America, behind Mexico, with 85 billion, and followed by Colombia (with 6.3 billion) and Peru (with 5.2 billion). In total, the Latin America and Caribbean region has suffered 137 billion attempted cyber attacks.
In addition to the extremely high numbers, the data reveals an increase in the use of more sophisticated and targeted strategies such as ransomware. During the first six months of 2022, approximately 384,000 ransomware distribution attempts were detected globally. Of these, 52,000 were destined for Latin America.
Mexico was the country with the highest ransomware distribution activity in the period, with more than 18,000 detections, followed by Colombia (17,000) and Costa Rica (14,000). Peru, Argentina and Brazil appear next.
Furthermore, according to FortiGuard Labs, the number of ransomware signatures has nearly doubled in six months. In the first half of 2022, 10,666 ransomware signatures were found in Latin America, with only 5,400 seen in the last half of 2021.
“Ransomware attacks are affecting companies across industries, governments and even entire economies, with new variants constantly emerging from the hands of diverse international cybercriminal groups. This is due to the profitability and attention that this type of attack brings to criminals, making them more dangerous and causing great financial and image losses to their victims”, says Alexandre Bonatti, Director of Engineering at Fortinet Brasil.
The most active ransomware campaigns in the region during the first half of 2022 were Revil, LockBit and Hive. Conti ransomware, in turn, has been one of the most popular in the media due to the high impact it has had recently in Costa Rica.
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