Egypt is the top ranked country for viruses in the EMEA region

Since the last ISTR issued in April 2008, Egypt has become more susceptible to online attacks, as its global ranking in terms of malicious attacks has moved up eight spots from 34th to 26th this year. Egypt has also proved to be the top ranked country in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region for potential virus infections. Virus activity in Egypt is high due to the growth in the number of broadband users combined with a possible lack of security awareness in the internet community.

"The reasons for Egypt's prominence in this measurement may be that many Egyptians still primarily use internet cafés or other publicly accessible shared computers to access the internet. Public computers used by large numbers of people for a wide variety of purposes have an increased window of exposure to attack. These patterns indicate an increase in the exposure of Egyptians to malicious attacks, including those from worms."

said Johnny Karam, Regional Director, Symantec.

For the second year in a row, Saudi Arabia is ranked first in the Middle East for online attacks. Most countries in the region are not as highly ranked on a global level as they were in the 2008 report, with the exception of Qatar which was ranked 78th last year, moving up to 69th in 2009.

When quantifying spam and phishing attacks, the report singles out the UAE as the top ranked country in the region closely followed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Six of the top 10 countries responsible for originating web-based attacks in 2008 were from the EMEA region accounting for 45% of the worldwide total.