Fortinet, the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, announced the latest semiannual FortiGuard Labs Global Threat Landscape Report. Latin America and the Caribbean suffered more than 360 billion attempted cyberattacks in 2022, according to data from FortiGuard Labs, Fortinet’s threat intelligence and analysis laboratory.

Mexico received the most attempted attacks (187 billion), followed by Brazil (103 billion), Colombia (20 billion), and Peru (15 billion).

“For cyber adversaries, maintaining access and evading detection is no small feat as cyber defences continue to advance to protect organisations today. To counter, adversaries are augmenting with more reconnaissance techniques and deploying more sophisticated attack alternatives to enable their destructive attempts with APT-like threat methods such as wiper malware or other advanced payloads,” says Derek Manky, chief security strategist & global VP threat intelligence, FortiGuard Labs. “To protect against these advanced persistent cybercrime tactics, organisations need to focus on enabling machine learning-driven coordinated and actionable threat intelligence in real time across all security devices to detect suspicious actions and initiate coordinated mitigation across the extended attack surface.”

Further, Fortinet also reported:

* The mass distribution of wiper malware continues to showcase the destructive evolution of cyberattacks.

* The ransomware threat remains at peak levels with no evidence of slowing down globally with new variants enabled by Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS).

* The most prevalent malware was more than a year old and had gone through a large amount of speciation, highlighting the efficacy and economics of reusing and recycling code.

* Log4j continues to rear its ugly head among organisations in all regions and industries, most notably across technology, government, and education.