Cyberthreats Map: watch global threats in real time

Kaspersky Lab presents its new interactive Cyberthreats Realtime Map. Living up to its name, this visual tool allows users to see what is going on in cybersecurity around the world in real time.

A few years ago Kaspersky Lab launched its cloud service named Kaspersky Security Network, an early warning system for various types of new cyberthreats. This service allows KSN users to receive information about new threats in a matter of minutes after their initial detection, providing yet another protection layer.

Given that today, Kaspersky Security Network has over 60 million users, this is an invaluable statistical tool for Kaspersky Lab to have, allowing our researchers to monitor and analyze the threat landscape continuously in real time. Data from KSN allows Kaspersky Lab’s researchers to identify the most vulnerable and most attacked software. Overall, Kaspersky Security Bulletins are now based on data obtained and processed using the Kaspersky Security Network service.

Now, back to the Cyberthreats Realtime Map. It is actually an interactive visualization of data streams coming from KSN – threats detected with various diagnostic tools, including On-Access Scan, On-Demand Scan, Web and Mail Anti-Viruses, as well as the Vulnerability Scan and Intrusion Detection System.

Cyberthreats Realtime Map allows users to compare different types of threats and their distribution around the world at any given time. It’s pretty apparent that the amount of spam, malware infection rates vary according to the time of the day in any given region. However, some factors are more persistent than others. Right now the Cyberthreats Realtime Map shows that Russia, India, Vietnam, USA and Germany are the top five most infected countries in the world.

Regarding the functions, the map is easy to handle: the globe spins according to mouse movements; the wheel allows users to zoom in or out. Different kinds of threats are color-coded (blue and purple lines are prevalent), and users can hide any of them at their own convenience. Also the map can be made into a 2D-projection at any given time.

The most practical button, however, is the one located at the top right corner of the screen:

It links to a free Kaspersky Security Scan 2014 diagnostic tool. Perhaps it is time to use it?