Debasish Mukherjee, VP Regional Sales APAC at SonicWall 

Debasish Mukherjee, VP Regional Sales APAC at SonicWall observes a slight decline in malware in India, which is roughly in line with what is seen globally.  “However, given that cybercriminals have become increasingly more sophisticated, we have observed a change in strategy with the ransomware subset of malware.  Whereas hackers were previously casting a wide net with ransomware attacks, we now see focused efforts directed at fewer, higher value targets than before.  This has resulted in a relatively large decrease in ransomware in India, as compared to both the global ransomware trend as well as overall malware.  Where we have seen an increase in India is in intrusion attempts.  In fact, India has one of the highest year-over-year increases in intrusion attempts globally.  It’s important to note that intrusion attempts could be related to a variety of factors - e.g., it could be accidental, due to misconfigured network equipment, or purposely, once potential hackers discover and exploit the vulnerability that misconfiguration has caused.  This underscores why it’s so important for VARs to leverage network security equipment that can quickly identify and protect against unauthorized traffic.”