TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — According to Microsoft's Security Endpoint Threat Report 2019 released in June, Taiwan experienced a significantly higher rate of ransomware and other malware attacks than the rest of the world last year.

In the annual report, Microsoft unveiled its Asia Pacific findings, which it says "were derived from an analysis of diverse Microsoft data sources, including 8 trillion threat signals received and analyzed by Microsoft every day, covering a 12-month period, from January to December 2019.”

The research covered a total of 15 markets, including China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia.

The report pointed out that the incidence of malware attacks in the Asia-Pacific continues to be higher than the rest of the world.

The report also revealed that even though the encounter rate of malware attacks in Taiwan was 1.4 times lower than the Asia-Pacific average, it was still 1.2 higher than the global average. Meanwhile, Taiwan experienced ransomware attacks 2.5 times more often than the rest of the Asia Pacific on average and 1.5 times more often than the rest of the world's average.

Developing countries, including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Vietnam, were the most vulnerable to malware threats in 2019.

"Countries that have higher piracy rates and lower cyber hygiene tend to be more severely impacted by cyberthreats. Patching, using legitimate software, and keeping it updated can decrease the likelihood of malware and ransomware infections," said Mary Jo Schrade, assistant general counsel for Microsoft Asia's Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit.