Globally, High-malware Regions Have Less Broadband

Shutterstock When it comes to malware infestations, it turns out that the most wired regions of the world are actually the least vulnerable.

It may seem counterintuitive if one considers malware infection to be opportunistic and therefore a numbers game — the more endpoints available, the higher the number of infections — but Microsoft has found that regions with the lowest malware rates on average had more personal computers in use per capita, higher health expenditure per capita, regime stability and greater broadband penetration.

Microsoft’s Security Intelligence Report (SIR) covers threat intelligence about malware trends globally on an annual basis, but the software kahuna has released a special edition, “Linking Cybersecurity Policy and Performance,” which cross-references malware data with more than 80 socio-economic factors across 105 countries.