A new report from cybersecurity firm Kaspersky reveals a significant rise in targeted, on-device malware attacks against businesses in Southeast Asia (SEA), with nearly 50 million incidents blocked in 2024 alone—up 15 percent from 2023. These attacks, delivered via USB drives and other removable media, highlight a growing cybersecurity blind spot: offline threats that bypass internet-based defenses.
Kaspersky general manager for SEA, Yeo Siang Tiong, said that even government-secured USB drives were compromised, demonstrating how malware is now capable of exploiting trusted physical devices to exfiltrate sensitive data and propagate across networks. Singapore experienced the sharpest spike (88 percent year-over-year), raising alarms across the region’s corporate landscape.
The commercial implications are considerable, including potential IP theft, operational disruption, and loss of consumer trust. Kaspersky urges enterprises to adopt multi-layered defense strategies, combining threat intelligence, employee training, and advanced detection platforms like Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack and Next XDR Expert, to mitigate the risks posed by increasingly sophisticated offline attacks.
