IBM study warns of rising cyber crime

Study says India has shown continuous growth and now dominates the scene by large margin

As corporates are slowly adopting the new trends like bring your own device (BYOD) and social media, cyber criminals are looking at this as an opportunity.

According to a report from IBM, there is a sharp increase in browser-related exploits, renewed concerns around social media password security and continued challenges in mobile devices and corporate BYOD programmes.

The study of IBM -- Force 2012 mid-year trend and risk report, also said that India has shown a nearly continuous growth and now dominates the scene by a large margin, sending out nearly 16% of all spams. This might be due to a 25% growth in Indian internet users over the past 12 months, according to the report.

The data is from IBM's security operations centres which monitor over 15 billion security events a day on behalf of approximately 4,000 clients in over 130 countries.

“Today’s security risks are fundamentally different; businesses have to be proactive about security, anticipating the kinds of risks that expanding the business or opening up operations to more clients and partners will create,” said Vaidyanathan Iyer, Country Manager for Security, Software Group, IBM ISA.

The report also said that as smartphone penetration is increasing, the users are still most at risk of premium SMS (short message service, or texting) scams. These scams work by sending SMS messages to premium phone numbers in a variety of different countries automatically from installed applications.