The Philippines recorded 1.8 million cases of on-device cyberattacks targeting businesses in 2024, placing third among Southeast Asian countries, according to global cybersecurity and digital privacy firm Kaspersky.

In its latest report, Kaspersky said Filipino businesses were among the most targeted in the ASEAN region last year. Indonesia topped the list with 16 million reported cyberthreat incidents, followed by Malaysia with 4 million. Singapore placed fifth with 900,000 reports.

Moreover, Kaspersky said that as businesses increasingly focus on securing their online networks, a lesser-known but equally dangerous threat is gaining traction: attacks via various “offline” methods, such as USB drives and removable media.

In 2024 alone, Kaspersky detected and prevented nearly 50 million on-device malware attacks targeting businesses in Southeast Asia (SEA).

The staggering figure underscores the urgent need for organizations to strengthen their defenses against attacks originating from USB drives and removable media.

On-device threats spread by offline methods involve the use of physical devices, such as USB drives, external hard drives, or other removable media, to deliver malicious software to a target system.

Unlike traditional cyberattacks that rely on internet connectivity, these attacks exploit the trust users place in physical devices.

"Towards the end of 2024, our experts uncovered a concerning case where a secure USB drive, developed by a government entity in Southeast Asia for securely storing and transferring files in sensitive environments, was compromised. Malicious code had been injected into its access management software, enabling it to steal confidential files from the drive's secure partition. Additionally, the code acted as a USB worm, spreading the infection to other drives of the same type, highlighting the sophisticated nature of this threat,” explained Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky.

Overall, Kaspersky solutions used by businesses in SEA blocked 49,234,759 local threats between January and December 2024.

This marks a 15 percent increase compared to 2023’s nearly 43 million offline attacks.

Singapore saw the highest surge in offline attacks between 2023 and 2024 (88%), followed by Malaysia (47%), Vietnam (25%), Thailand (20%), and the Philippines (16%).

Only Indonesia logged a slight drop in local threats at -3% year-on-year.