Risk of malware infection growing in UK

UK's businesses have had a bigger chance of being attacked by a malware than those in the US or the Republic of Ireland in December 2015, a new report by security researchers suggest.

According to a report by Check Point, in December 2015, UK was the 99th most attacked country globally, surpassing the US (122nd) and the Republic of Ireland (116th).

The risk of malware infection in the UK increased 17 percent, the company concludes, with the number of active malware families increasing by 25 percent. The company says more than 1,500 different active malware families were identified in December, up from 1,200 in November.

The most popular malware was (and remains) Conficker, accounting for 25 percent of all known attacks in the period. Its popularity is seen even better once it’s compared to second-placed Sality, which accounted for 9 percent of attacks.

Conficker works by disabling security services, rendering the machine vulnerable to DDoS and similar attacks.

Nathan Shuchami, head of Threat Prevention at Check Point said: "The increase in active malware during December highlights the severity of the threat posed to organizations' networks and sensitive data. As a result, organizations should be pushing cyber-security to the top of their agendas for 2016, as cyber-criminals continually find new ways to attack networks, so that they can be equally relentless in robustly securing their networks".

The top three malware variants used to attack UK networks during November were Conficker, Kelihos and HackerDefender.

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