Jamaica hit by more than 30 million cyber attacks in first half of 2025

 

Jamaica recorded more than 30 million cyber attack attempts in the first six months of this year. 

 

This is according to the latest of Fortinet Global Threat Landscape Report. 

 

Fortinet says the findings highlight the urgent need for stronger defences to protect the country's critical infrastructure as attackers increasingly target sectors such as manufacturing, telecommunications, healthcare and financial services.

 

The 30 million attacks were made over 181 days.

 

The report revealed that in the same six-month period, four million active scans were detected. 

 

These scans are networks being probed and tested by attackers at a pace of 36,000 attempts per second worldwide, helping cyber criminals identify weak points they can exploit. 

 

Cybersecurity expert Craig Powe said the attacks have become more sophisticated as hackers leverage tools like FraudGPT and WormGPT to quickly generate convincing phishing emails and carry out social engineering schemes.

 

"I think anybody who is 13 years old today in Jamaica who has a phone would have the ability to do the thing because if you're on TikTok or you're on Instagram and you see any of those prank calls, fake voices, it doesn't take much intelligence to do it because there are systems right now that you can go on for free and you don't even have to upload a voice. You can take Donald Trump's voice for free," he noted.

 

"The problem with the internet is that anyone can say anything and if somebody who has authority in real life says something and it looks like him, it sounds like him or her, and the average person just scrolling by within a bunch of videos that are real, in the context of seeing a bunch of real things and then I see a fake thing, I might not be able to tell," Mr. Powe reasoned.

 

The Office of the Registrar General, Jamaica's sole repository of birth, death, marriage and fetal death records was hit by a cyber attack last month. 

 

It said the attack was an attempt to disrupt systems and gain access to personal data. 

 

Cybersecurity executive at JN Group Dwayne Brown is urging Gmail users to strengthen their account security and adopt safer log in practices.

 

His appeal comes after Google's recent alert to its 2.5 billion users about a breach and the potential for increased hacking attempts exploiting its exposed business contact information. 

 

"Even though passwords weren't compromised, attackers can use the lead data to do harm. Attackers will generally send email that looks legitimate with users' details. They can craft urgent or personalised messages, increasing the likelihood that these users will let down their guards," he warned.