Web attacks target manufacturers the most in APAC: report

One of the main causes is supply chain disruption.

Asia Pacific manufacturers continued to be highly vulnerable to cyberattacks with a new report by Akamai showing the industry as the most targeted sector of attacks targeting application programming interfaces (APIs).

Akamai’s “State of the Internet” report showed nearly a third or 31.2% of the web attacks that targeted APIs in the region last year were in the manufacturing sector.

The cloud platform traced the high volume of incidents to the “increasing connectivity of this critical infrastructure sector via APIs and the potential for supply chain disruption.”

The second-most targeted sector was gaming (25.2%), followed by high technology (24.2%), video media (24%), and commerce (22.3%).

Experts at Akamai stressed the need to defend API from attacks from a security and risk management standpoint. API allows two software applications to communicate to exchange data, features and functionality.

Globally, 15% of all the web attacks that targeted APIs were detected in Asia Pacific. South Korea (47.9%), Indonesia (39.6%), Hong Kong (38.7%), Malaysia (26.4%) and Japan (23.4%) were the five countries that experienced the most incidents in the region.

“Regulators are putting initiatives and policies in place to strengthen cybersecurity standards for APIs, which are increasingly being used to exchange sensitive financial information,” Akamai stated in the report.

“Understanding best practices and guidelines is important so that you can integrate APIs into your security program to improve visibility, strengthen defenses, and map to compliance requirements,” it added.