Only 18.72% of Malaysian consumers feel “extremely confident” that businesses are doing enough to protect them against cyber crime. Limelight Networks released its ‘State of Cybersecurity’ research report, looking at how consumers perceive the current state of cybersecurity in their online transactions. When it comes to cybercrime, consumers are most concerned about violations of financial and personal information, with 75.62% respondent noting this as most concerning.
The “State of Cybersecurity” report for Southeast Asia is based on a survey of 1,300 consumers ranging in age, gender, and education and over 300 businesses across Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The survey shows how business responds to cyber-attacks can significantly impact consumer trust and affect brand reputation and long-term revenue.
Increasing cybercrime has not stopped consumers from continuing their online activities. The report found that 92.36% of Malaysian consumers check a site’s security before partaking in e-commerce or other activities; in comparison, Singaporean consumers appear less concerned with only 86.73%. When making a transaction, Smartphones are device of choice in Malaysia; laptops coming in second.
The Limelight report also found that a brand’s reputation and credibility were directly impacted once their website has been hacked. According to the report, more than 70 percent of Malaysian consumers change their opinions of a brand after a cyber-attack.
The vast majority of businesses who responded to the survey indicated that their organisation has implemented technologies to protect against DDoS and other attacks. This is an important note as more than half of the Malaysian businesses indicated that their organisation’s digital presence had been attacked in the past two years, resulting in site downtime or loss of data.
However, businesses note that the major hurdles to implementing cybersecurity solutions are cost (26.67%) and lack of in-house expertise (25.7%) to manage security solutions. For businesses deploying cybersecurity solutions, a combination of cloud and on-premise is preferred with 42.86% of respondents favouring this approach.
“With a potential cyber-attack lurking in the corner, brands can no longer rest on ‘legacy trust’ that they have built over the years. Today, it’s about building trust each time a customer transacts with a brand online. Cybersecurity is never a one-size-fits-all approach. Brands need to think about a multi-layered approach to security and explore the use of a cloud-based solution. They also need to employ a content delivery network (CDN) that can buffer volumetric attacks,” said Jaheer Abbas, Sales Regional Director, SE Asia and ANZ at Limelight Networks. “Not only can a CDN mitigate DDoS and other high-volume cyber-attacks, it can also have a significantly positive impact on the end-user experience by improving the speed and quality of content delivery,” he added.
