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Symantec's 2013 Norton Report finds rising cybercrime incidents in India

Symantec's 2013 Norton Report finds rising cybercrime incidents in India

By Anupam Saxena | Updated: 22 October 2013 17:03 IST

Symantec has released the India related findings from the 2013 Norton Report, revealing that India is among the world's top five countries for the highest number of incidences of cybercrime.

According to Symantec, the cybercrime incidences comprise ransomware (11 percent), identity theft (11 percent) and phishing (9 percent).

The company says that the report reveals that the average cost of a cybercrime victim in India has increased from $192 to $207 over an year.

"At first glance of the India findings, we were happy to see a significant drop from last year in the total number of victims and total cost of cybercrime, but a closer scrutiny revealed an alarming trend," said Ritesh Chopra, country manager, Norton by Symantec. "Today's cybercriminals are using more sophisticated attacks, such as ransomware and spear-phishing, which yield them more money per attack than ever before. With 66 percent of Indian consumers using their personal mobile device for both work and play, this creates entirely new security risks for enterprises as cybercriminals have the potential to access even more valuable information."

According to 2013 Norton Report, around 11 percent of all respondents were victims of ransom ware, a form of virtual extortion. In addition to Ransomware, in the last 12 months, 56 percent of cybercrime victims in India have experienced online bullying, online stalking, online hate crime or other forms of online harassment.

The report also reveals that 63 percent of smartphone users in India have experienced some form of mobile cybercrime in the past 12 months.

The 2013 Norton Report adds that a large percentage of Indian Wi-Fi users access social networks (61 percent); shop online (44 percent); and access their bank account (42 percent) through a public or unsecure Wi-Fi. A number of social network users in India share their password with others (18 percent), don't log out of each session (21 percent) and connect with people they don't know (18 percent).

The findings of the survey show that this behaviour isn't entirely due to lack of awareness as more than half (55 percent) of consumers surveyed admitted that the convenience of being constantly connected outweighed any potential security risks, as per Symantec.

57 percent respondents said that there was no such thing as "online privacy" in today's world and 61 percent assume that "everything they put online will / can be seen by any and every one".

Symantec mentioned that the survey was conducted on a sample size of 1,000 consumers across different cities, in India.

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