Seven African nations among 20 countries in the world were most targeted by cyber criminals in October with Tanzania as the most attacked country.
This is according to Check Point's recent October 2015 statistics for its ThreatCloud World Cyber Threat Map.
Based on threat intelligence, the Threat Map tracks how and where cyber attacks are taking place worldwide in real time.
Six other African countries - Malawi (4), Namibia (5), Mauritius (7), Tunisia (8), Ethiopia (9) and Nigeria (20) - were ranked in the top 20 most-attacked countries, ahead of Kenya (52) and South Africa (67).
Hackers often target less developed countries to gain backdoor access into larger countries or organisations, says Doros Hadjizenonos, country manager at Check Point SA.
"A large bank in SA could have a small branch in Tanzania. Hackers could exploit weaker security controls in Tanzania to gain entry into the bank's larger network. This is why third-party links should be subject to even more stringent security controls."
The Threat Map tracks identified more than 1 500 different malware families during October. The three most common malware types focus on remote control of infected PCs, enabling them to be used for launching distributed denial of service (DDOS) and spam campaigns.
Attacks using two malware families that enable ransomware scams and theft of users' credentials also rose sharply, says Check Point.
According to Hadjizenonos, many African countries have well-developed mobile Internet networks that make it affordable for people to be online all the time. Cybercriminals are targeting mobile devices to try to access sensitive data, he adds.
As a result, in the past three months, Check point has seen an increase of 20-35% per month in the amount of attacks for recognised mobile malware families, which is much higher than the growth of general malware families, says Check Point.
The top three mobile malware families in October were all Android-based exploits, it adds.
"Threats targeting mobile devices are growing rapidly, but many organisations are not applying adequate security measures to protect them or their users, putting sensitive corporate data at risk."
Companies need to be aware of these risks and apply security to stop mobile malware, he adds.
Darryn O'Brien, country manager at Trend Micro, says although there are now more hackers targeting consumers and companies around the world, Africa and some emerging markets are more vulnerable to these attacks.
Hackers will always focus on individuals and companies that are easy targets, he adds.
In SA, the spear phishing is still one of the most common methods of gaining initial access, says O'Brien.
Spear Phishing has evolved to such an extent that hackers are browsing applications such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to gain valuable information on a target such as a company event, new hires, new policies, acquisitions before launching their targeted attack, he adds.
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