Rosy economic picture marred by persistent cyberattack threats

The Philippines is expected to sustain a double-digit economic growth in the upcoming years. This growth will be driven by the thriving e-commerce sector following the pandemic and the projected rise in the consumption of digital products and services across different industries.

However, despite the optimistic economic outlook, the country still faces the persistent threat of phishing and cyberattacks. These threats affect both individuals and organizations in the Philippines.

Kaspersky, a global cybersecurity and digital privacy company,  launched the Unified Monitoring and Analysis Platform, or KUMA, on Tuesday to help Filipino businesses and organizations adopt digitalization while staying safe in cyberspace.

Integrated software solution

The KUMA platform is an integrated software solution designed to provide security information and event monitoring and management functions.

This is particularly important for local businesses and organizations that operate in heavily regulated sectors such as public utilities, financial services and healthcare.

“When it comes to cybersecurity, even the most secure operating systems can be compromised. As Advanced Persistent Threat actors are constantly evolving their tactics and searching for new weaknesses to exploit, businesses must prioritize the security of their systems,” Yeo Siang Tiong, general manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky, said.

“This involves providing employees and technical teams with the latest tools to effectively recognize and defend against potential threats as well as timely remediation of incidents,” he added.

Sophisticated targeted attacks 

For Victor Chu, head of Systems Engineering for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky, the newly launched solution will help combat the “sophisticated targeted attacks” as it provides a centralized view of security events in quickly identifying and responding to potential threats such as the Security Information and Event Management System.

Based on Kaspersky’s 2024 threat forecast in the Southeast Asian region, which includes the Philippines, experts predict that financial service outages, DDoS attacks, and website defacements will continue to persist.

Last year, Kaspersky’s detection systems blocked 26,164,698 web attacks, or nearly 72,000 per day, and 22,731,157 local infection attempts, or more than 62,000 daily, against its users in the Philippines.