Mexico concentrated just over half of all cyber threats reported in Latin America in the first half of 2024, cybersecurity firm Fortinet noted in a study.
The firm specified that Mexico suffered 31 billion cybercrime attempts during the first half of 2024, or 55 percent of those in the region.
In a presentation, the head of Fortinet in Mexico, Jorge Miranda, stated that Mexico faces more attacks than Brazil due to its proximity and commercial ties with the United States.
Processing companies associated with the nearshoring are being directly targeted by attacks ransomware to obtain much larger ransoms, he explained.
As Mexico experiences a boom in nearshoring –phenomenon in which companies move production closer to their primary markets – cybercriminals have been targeting sectors such as logistics and automotive and electronics manufacturing to maximize the impact and benefits of their attacks.
Hackers are increasingly targeting specific market segments for higher ransoms, and are also using artificial intelligence to increase efficiency.
And although the figures for the first half of the year in Mexico may seem like a slowdown compared to the 94 billion attacks in all of 2023, Miranda stressed that the cybercrime rate remains very high.
The firm expects Mexico to enact a cybersecurity law to underpin a strategy against attacks in the next year or two.
President Claudia Sheinbaum pledged last week to create a cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI) center during her term, but did not mention a law.
Fortinet, based in Sunnyvale, California, estimates a global shortage of four million AI professionals, including 1.3 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and around 500,000 in Mexico.
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