92% of Indonesian MSMEs Hit by Cyber Incidents Last Year: Kaspersky Survey

A recent survey by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has revealed that 92 percent of Indonesian Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) experienced cyber incidents in the past year. This figure places Indonesia below Vietnam at 97 percent and Malaysia at 95 percent, but above India at 87 percent. Across the Asia Pacific region on average, organizations experience three different types of security incidents. For companies with fewer than 500 employees, software vulnerability exploitation is the most common attack method, accounting for 20 percent. Phishing follows with 19 percent, while mass malware attacks reached 18 percent. Key risk factors identified in Kaspersky's survey include a lack of security awareness among non-IT employees, cited by 26 percent of respondents, and a shortage of IT security staff expertise at 24 percent. The use of outdated software or hardware (23 percent), along with the absence of periodic risk assessments and adequate security solutions (each 22 percent), were also highlighted as contributing factors. "Our survey shows that they are the main targets of modern threat actors who use exactly the same enterprise-level tactics," said Adrian Hia, Kaspersky Asia Pacific Managing Director. "The assumption that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can escape the attention of cybercriminals is no longer relevant." Despite the increasing threat landscape, as many as 78 percent of MSMEs in the Asia Pacific region have increased their cybersecurity budgets this year. Almost half (48 percent) allocated additional funds to expand IT and IT security teams, while 32 percent used it to switch to security solutions such as XDR, NDR, and SIEM.