Canada ranked fourth-most vulnerable country to ransomware

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – From spam to phishing scams and ransomware, Canadians face a number of cyber security threats.

And it turns out we rank quite high when it comes to a number different types of attacks, according to Symantec’s annual Internet Security Threat Report.

“Certainly, one of the biggest threats facing Canadians right now is something called ransomware. Globally, Canada is number four. They’re seeing over 16,000 attacks per day,” says Kevin Haley with Symantec Security Response.

“Ransomware is a type of threat that will encrypt the files on your machine and it will charge you a ransom in order to get access to your files back. We in fact saw a 35 per cent increase from 2014 in this type of attack.”

But that’s not the only threat you face by powering on your laptop or tablet.

“In social media, Canada is actually number five. They are the fifth-most attacked country for social media scams,” says Haley.

We’re also 10th when it comes to the amount of spam we receive, while one in every 500-or-so emails received in Canada contains malicious code.

“Overall, Canada is ranked at number 19 for malicious threats overall. Canada is number 10 in the world for bots. those are zombie-type computers that are being used to send threats against other people. They are number 13 when looked at globally by networks or countries that are being attacked and they are ranked 23rd for web attacks, so attacks that are coming in through websites,” says Haley.

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