Latin America: The New Frontier for Cyber Attacks

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is the new frontier for cyber attacks, a crime that costs the world up to $575 billion a year, according to a joint study by the Center for Strategic Studies and McAfee. In LAC alone, the cost is estimated at about $90 billion per year.

A rise in the number of people with access to Internet-connected devices, in addition to developing economies that are increasingly technologically savvy, means opportunity for cyber criminals. In Brazil, for example, the country saw a 197 percent year-over-year increase in cyber attacks in 2015. Level 3 Communications – a global network services provider – recently found that 12 percent of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks target Latin America, and that number is escalating.