Detections increased 42% YoY as malicious actors stepped up their attacks

HONG KONG SAR - Media OutReach - 25 January 2022 - Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), announced today that its industry-leading threat intelligence infrastructure, Smart Protection Network™ (SPN), stopped 94.2 billion* cyber-threats heading for consumer, government and business customers in 2021.

The volume of detections represents a 42% increase on the number of detections recorded in 2020. It reveals that attacks surged by over 53 billion in the second half of 2021 after Trend Micro blocked 41 billion threats in 1H 2021.

The threats were detected by more than five trillion threat queries, a 36% year-on-year increase from queries in 2020. Trend Micro's SPN leverages over 250 million sensors across the broadest attack surface globally to proactively protect organizations and individuals faster.

"Trend Micro detects threats across endpoints, mobile, servers, IoT/IIoT, home networks, messaging, network, web and cloud environments," said Jon Clay, vice president of threat intelligence for Trend Micro. "That's a testament to our continuous effort to expand attack surface protections and improve our advanced detection technologies deployed to 500,000 commercial and government accounts and millions of consumer customers. But it also underscores the mounting threat from bad actors, as outlined in our 2022 predictions report."

Despite a double-digit surge in detected cyber-threats from 2020 to 2021, Trend Micro blocked 66% fewer ransomware attacks over the period, reinforcing the theory that these threats are becoming more targeted. Another contributing factor in this decrease is that more ransomware attacks are being blocked in earlier stages before being deployed. Over 14 million attacks were proactively stopped in 2021 before they could impact customers.

Even with Trend Micro's comprehensive cloud-first protection capabilities, security teams must be prepared for another onslaught of threats in 2022. Trend Micro predicts that IoT systems, global supply chains, cloud environments and DevOps functions will come under increasing scrutiny from attackers over the coming year.

Enhanced risk-based patching, XDR, server hardening, Zero Trust, network monitoring and DevSecOps practices will be critical to prevent spiraling cyber risk in 2022.

*The figure stands at 94,289,585,240 threats.

About Trend Micro

Trend Micro, a global cybersecurity leader, helps make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Fueled by decades of security expertise, global threat research, and continuous innovation, Trend Micro's cybersecurity platform protects hundreds of thousands of organizations and millions of individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints. As a leader in cloud and enterprise cybersecurity, the platform delivers a powerful range of advanced threat defense techniques optimized for environments like AWS, Microsoft, and Google, and central visibility for better, faster detection and response. With 7,000 employees across 65 countries, Trend Micro enables organizations to simplify and secure their connected world.

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