Cyberattacks drop by 78 percent

ATTEMPTED cyberattacks on Jamaican networks fell 78 percent in the first six months of this year, according to Fortinet, a global cybersecurity solutions company. The country recorded four million such attacks during that period, down from 19 million during the same period last year.

Speaking at a media roundtable on Wednesday, cybersecurity provider executives attributed the decline to heightened vigilance and monitoring of local areas, fewer distributed attacks and more targeted and coordinated attacks, and the use of artificial intelligence and other technologies that have significantly aided surveillance efforts.

Attempted attacks on the country, which numbered 43 million last year (compared to 30 million in 2022), were only a fraction of the 200 billion recorded across the entire Latin America and Caribbean region.

“As the threat landscape evolves in Jamaica and around the world, we have seen proactive responses help significantly reduce the number to four million in the first half of this year. It’s not that bad actors aren’t focused on Jamaica… it’s just that the targets have become much more specialized and concentrated in certain areas,” said Carlo Caloca, regional sales manager, Fortinet English Caribbean.

Pointing to an increase in more targeted attacks on sectors such as utilities, transportation, healthcare and government, Caloca called for greater awareness, which he said can help customers reduce their exposure to attacks.

To protect against advanced cybercrime tactics, he urged organizations to focus on enabling coordinated, actionable threat intelligence, supported by AI-integrated real-time security appliances, to detect suspicious activity and initiate coordinated remediation actions.

“As (hackers) move towards more targeted and targeted attacks and different industries, we’ve also had to make the necessary adjustments to address the threats. So, we’ve invested a lot in AI over the last 10 years — because it’s one of the next technologies that will help our customers detect and respond to different threats,” added Emmanuel Oscar, senior manager of systems engineering at Fortinet for the Caribbean.

Collaboration with a range of private and public sector partners, including government entities such as the Jamaica CyberIncident Response Team (JaCIRT), a 20-year-old company that has been operating in Jamaica for half that time and is proud of its contribution to strengthening the country’s cybersecurity.

“We’ve had a great partnership over the last 10 years, we’ve worked very closely with the government and we see that they’ve put a lot of work into protecting that space… they’re growing and we’re seeing improvements,” said Ronald Donaldson, Country Manager, Fortinet Jamaica.

JaCIRT, as the national cyber watchdog, said earlier this year that it was continuing to increase its vigilance, strengthening its defences against potential targeted attacks. Outlining the national threat landscape, Lieutenant Colonel Godphey Sterling, the organisation’s head, said: Jamaica Observer that since the beginning of this year, the entity has tracked down more than 150 compromised websites, 42,000 compromised credentials across six monitored domains, and 1,200 unique IP addresses, among other breaches.

Fortinet, which aims to double the scale of its local operations, said plans to achieve this goal in the short term remain a priority.

“The plan is to continue to invest and Jamaica as a big player in the Anglo-Anglo Caribbean is also a number one market for us and it is at the top of the list of countries where we will continue to invest as we look to grow and expand. Given most of the risks that we see in the region, it is important that we continue to invest in developing our assets while strengthening our partner ecosystem locally,” Caloca noted.