In Yucatan, 70% of the local companies have suffered cyber-attacks

The Southeast Regional President of the National Chamber of the Electronics Industry of Telecommunications and Information Technologies (Canieti), Víctor Julián Morales Rivas, pointed out that in Yucatán 70 percent of the total number of existing companies have been victims of cyber-attacks.

The leader of the business organization mentioned that nowadays these attempts of illicit attacks are becoming more common and sophisticated, so their effectiveness is increasing.

In this sense, he explained that of the total number of companies that have suffered cyber-attacks in Yucatan, close to half (35 percent of the total) have already fallen into some type of deception or have been victims of cyber-criminals.

He detailed that among the most common cyber crimes, not only in Yucatan, but in the whole country, are identity theft and theft of funds in accounts linked to social network profiles.

“In these last two years approximately 70 percent of all the companies in the state have been attacked, some cases have been successful and others have not, but that they have been attacked is a fact,” he mentioned.

In addition, Morales Rivas indicated that currently “fishing” or “victim fishing” is one of the cybercrimes that is on the rise and comes “from all sides“, since through rigged links sent by text message, WhatsApp, Facebook, email and other means, criminals steal information such as photographs, videos or personal and banking data, which they later use against the victim to blackmail him/her.

Acknowledging that these are new crimes and that they are on the rise, the president of Canieti in the southeast expressed that they constantly train the members of this organization and also raise awareness among the business and civil society about how cybercriminals operate, in order to prevent more victims, since a single attack can cause damages of up to 100 thousand pesos.

“All cyber-attacks are robotized, they are programs specifically designed for that purpose and many of these crimes are committed from other parts of the world, I have seen attacks coming from Asia, Africa, Latin America, specifically from India, Russia, they come from all over the world”, he warned.

Morales Rivas pointed out that for this reason it is necessary for all companies to have cybersecurity professionals. This will be an advantage for the students of the Polytechnic University of Yucatan (UPY) and the Metropolitan Technological University (UTM), where two laboratories specialized in the subject were recently inaugurated.

He said that all those who specialize in preventing cyber attacks will be graduates who will have a wide field of work that has not been explored so far.

TYT Newsroom