India in top 3 originating IoT malware infection in 2022: Microsoft

New Delhi: A Microsoft report inferred that India is one of the top 3 countries originating Internet of Things (IoT) malware infection in 2022.

Since organisations in the country are looking to modernise workspaces, become more data-driven and ease demands on staff through shifts like remote management and automation, IoT devices offer significant value for them.

"Therefore, the cyber-threat landscape is real, and security is the need of the hour. Microsoft aims to help incident responders and security specialists better understand their environments and prevent potential incidents," a tech giant told IANS.

As per the International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates, 41.6 billion connected IoT devices will be there by 2025. This is a growth rate higher than traditional IT equipment.

With increasing connectivity across converging IT, Operational Technology (OT) and IoT, organisations and individuals need to rethink cyber risk impact and consequences, said the report.

Microsoft detected a surge in threats across traditional IT equipment, OT controllers and IoT devices like routers and cameras. This was boosted by many organisations adopting interconnectivity in the last few years. Unpatched and high-severity vulnerabilities were found in 75 per cent of the most common industrial controllers in customer OT networks, the report said.

Microsoft's corporate vice president Vasu Jakkal said, "As OT systems underpinning energy, transportation, and other infrastructures become increasingly connected to IT systems, the risk of disruption and damage grows as boundaries blur between these formerly separated worlds."

Jakkal added that for businesses and infrastructure operators across industries, the defensive imperatives are gaining total visibility over connected systems and weighing evolving risks and dependencies.

Traditional security measures are inefficient against current threats like sophisticated malware, targeted attacks, and malicious insiders.

Microsoft also observed more than 1 million connected devices publicly visible on the Internet running Boa, an outdated and unsupported software still widely used in IoT devices and software development kits (SDKs).