Part of this evolution is the resounding desire of the workforce in Southeast Asia to stay within the hybrid setup, which boils down to our need for connection and empowerment as humans and we need to acknowledge that,” said Yeo Siang Tiong, general manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky. “Among our post-pandemic learnings is that flexibility, agility and openness are important to our sustainability and productivity in business. It was in 2022 when the pandemic restrictions were lifted and by that time, the RDP attempts spiraled down to 75,855,129 or a plunge of -49% from the previous year. When the workforce slowly started going hybrid in 2021, the RDP attack attempts went up a bit to 149,003,835. In the same year, there were about 147,565,037 remote desktop protocol (RDP) attack attempts against users of Kaspersky in Southeast Asia.

Hacking an RDP connection is lucrative for cybercriminals.

Originally designed as a remote administration tool, cybercriminals use RDP to penetrate the target computer by exploiting incorrectly configured settings or vulnerabilities such as weak passwords. It also allows access to other device resources and RDP clients are available for all the most used modern OS such as iOS, OS X, Linux, Unix, and even Android. In 2020, there was an increase globally in the number of people using remote access tools such as remote desktop protocol or RDP, one of the most popular application-level protocols for accessing Windows workstations or servers. With tons of valuable data employees bring with them on their devices, it could have felt like the best time for these cyber thugs who found themselves effortlessly stealing from their easy prey. Unfortunately, cybercriminals thought it worked to their advantage, too. At the same time, companies have come to accept it after it proved to have worked fairly well for two years.

The hybrid work setup isn’t entirely new, but employees now want to stick to it. In Southeast Asia, the rushed transition to work from home and then partially back to the office a year later turned to what people now embrace as the new norm. March 2020 may be remembered as the day the world went on lockdown because of the pandemic.

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