Brazil ranks third in email security threats

Brazil tops the global ranking in cyber threats distributed via email and ransomware, according to a new study by software firm Trend Micro.

According to the report, which analyzes the security landscape for 2019, Brazil has seen over 2 billion email threats during 2019. This ranks the country third in the world in that kind of threat, behind the United States, with 10 billion email threats and China, with 4 billion.

Brazil was also the second country in the world with the highest number of ransomware attacks in 2019, corresponding to 31.97% of global attacks. The US leads the ranking of ransomware attacks, followed by India.

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The Trend Micro report identified more than 1.8 billion ransomware threats globally from 2016 to 2019. The figure was calculated by combining all email, file and URL threats related to ransomware.

Each malicious URL in Brazil has the potential to reach 16.7 users, placing the country in the 17th position in the ranking of victims of malicious addresses blocked by Trend Micro, according to the report, noting that in 2019, there were more than 12 million hits to malicious URLs in Brazil.

Brazil also stood out in the number of malicious apps available, ranking 15th in the list. Of the more than five million applications analyzed in the report, 38,056 were malicious, carrying with threats such as adware, the display of advertisements that are difficult or impossible to close.

When it comes to malware, Trend Micro detected almost 13 million threats in Brazil in 2019, placing the country in the 10th position in the ranking for that type of threat.