ATTEMPTED cyberattacks on networks in Jamaica fell 78 per cent over the first six months of this year with the country recording four million such attacks over the period compared to 19 million attempts for the same period last year, according to global cybersecurity solutions company Fortinet.

Speaking at a media round table on Wednesday, executives of the cybersecurity services provider attributed the decline to heightened vigilance and monitoring of the local space, less scattered and more targeted and coordinated attacks as well as the use of artificial intelligence and other technologies which have tremendously aided surveillance efforts.

Attempted attacks for the country, which totalled 43 million last year — up from 30 million in 2022, represented only a fraction of the 200 billion seen for the entire Latin America and Caribbean region.

“As the threat landscape continues to evolve in Jamaica and elsewhere across the world, we have seen where proactive responses have helped to push the number significantly down to the four million seen for the first half of this year. It’s not that the bad actors are not focusing on Jamaica…it’s just that the targets have become much more specialised and concentrated in certain areas,” said Carlo Caloca, regional sales manager for Fortinet English Caribbean.

Pointing to the growth of more tailored attacks on industries such as utilities, transportation, health care and government and others, Caloca called for greater levels of awareness which he believes can help clients to improve vulnerabilities.

To protect against advanced cybercrime tactics, he further urged organisations to focus on enabling coordinated, actionable threat intelligence backed by the use of real-time AI integrated security devices, in order to detect suspicious activities and initiate coordinated mitigation.

“As [hackers] move towards more focused and targeted type of attacks and different industries, we have also had to make the necessary adjustments to counter threats. Over the last 10 years we have therefore been heavily invested in the development of AI — as this is one of the later technology that is going to help our customers to be able to detect and respond to the different threats,” senior manager for systems engineering at Fortinet for the Caribbean Emmanuel Oscar added.

Working with a number of partners spread across the private and public sectors, including government-led players such as Jamaica CyberIncident Response Team (JaCIRT), the two-decade-old company which has been operating in Jamaica for half the time, prides its contributions to the strengthening of the country’s cybersecurity posture.

“Through fruitful partnerships over the last 10 years, we have been working very closely with government and we see where it too has put in a great deal of work to keep the space protected…they are growing and we see improvements,” country manager for Fortinet Jamaica, Ronald Donaldson said.

JaCIRT, as the national cybersecurity watch dog, earlier this year said it continues to turn up its vigilance as it strengthens defences against potential targeted attacks. Head of the organisation Lieutenant Colonel Godphey Sterling, in outlining the national threat landscape, told the Jamaica Observer that the entity, since the start of this year, has tracked more than 150 compromised websites, 42,000 compromised credentials in the six domains it monitors and 1,200 unique IP addresses among other breaches.

Fortinet, in moving to double down on its business locally, said plans remains front and centre to realise this in the short term.

“The plan is to continue to invest and Jamaica as a large player in the English Caribbean is also a number one market for us which sits atop a list of countries in which we will continue to make investments as we look to grow and expand. Accounting for most of the threats we see in the region, it’s important that we continue to invest in growing our resources while strengthening our partner ecosystem locally,” Caloca noted.