Cybersecurity and cyberattacks in Mexico: the great challenges in 2024

In this intense 2024 election year, Mexico finds itself at a crucial crossroads in terms of cybersecurity. As digitalization advances in all sectors of society, from government to small businesses and individual citizens, the preparedness of virtual criminals also grows, making the challenges in terms of cyber protection increasingly complex.

According to El Economista, Mexico received 94,000 million of the 200,000 million attempted attacks that the cybersecurity company Fortinet detected in the Latin American region during the year 2023 .

Mexico suffers almost half of all cyber attacks in Latin America

Thus, the report highlights the attempts of attacks against companies and organizations in Mexico. represent 47% of all attacks in the Latin American region .

Persistent challenges in cybersecurity in Mexico

As such, Internet users and companies and organizations in Mexico that store sensitive information online face a series of significant cybersecurity challenges, including:

1. Growth of Cyberattacks in Mexico 2024 : The country has witnessed an increase in the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks and online fraud, ranging from ransomware targeting large corporations to phishing attacks targeting individual users.

In this sense, there is an increase in the presence of threats linked to applications of Microsoft Office ; these attacks persist because, in many cases, users do not have software update processes, and do not apply any digital prevention strategy.

Cyberattacks occur against individuals, organizations and companies: in the latter cases, the cost of a hack of sensitive data is invaluable, and can even lead to the closure of large companies.

2. Uneven Infrastructure: While large cities are well-connected and theoretically better protected in terms of cybersecurity, rural and marginalized areas face significant gaps in digital infrastructure and security knowledge, making them more vulnerable to certain attacks, such as “cloned” websites.

3. Creativity and vast resources of cybercriminals: As detailed in this article, last January, the cybersecurity solutions firm Avast reported that online stores of brands such as American Eagle, Forever 21, Converse, Hugo Boss, H&M and Zara have been imitated by scammers to trick users into stealing their personal and banking information when they try to create an account or pay for a product: “The biggest problem is that fake portals are very well positioned in search engines, which can make them appear even more credible,” Avast explained.

So far, the firm reports that it has managed to stop more than 21,000 operations involving this type of scam. However, Avast asks Mexican consumers to "take extreme precautions to avoid falling for this type of scam."

4. Regulation and Legislation :

Although the National Security Strategy created by the Mexican government together with academic and civil organizations and important representatives of the private sector has been in force since 2017, there are many black holes in this strategy, which was never implemented in a comprehensive and sustained manner.

So much so that the Mexican Senate itself recently debated how to face the challenge of cybersecurity more efficiently: " it is urgent to legislate on cybersecurity to avoid chaos ," they agreed in the Senate of the Republic.