The nation registered as many as 5,168 cyber-attacks on its information systems during 2020, representing an annual decline of 0.15%, according to data released by the Ministry of Information and Communications’ National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

December alone saw the country hit by 315 cyber-attacks, marking a 54.48% fall compared to the previous month, and a drop of 0.94% on-year.

A campaign aimed at reviewing and removing malware nationwide last year achieved several positive results, with the number of IP addresses of computers in virus-infected computer networks (IP Botnet) witnessing a sharp decrease.

Furthermore, the number of Botnet IPs has nearly halved to over 1 million after being at over 2 million in the period from June 16, 2020, to July 15, 2020.

Statistics compiled by the NCSC indicate that the campaign, which was hosted by the Ministry of Information and Communications and implemented by NCSC in co-ordination with corporations such as VNPT, Viettel, BKAV, FPT, and CMC, has been actively supported by members of the community.

This can be seen as over 1.2 million computers were scanned, detecting malware present on more than 400,000 of those devices.

After over 8 million visits to the campaign via websites and various social networks, many individuals and organisations have been actively participating in inspecting, processing, and removing malware from thousands of computers of individuals and businesses for free.

In addition, the number of individuals and agencies giving feedback on the campaign reached over 23,000.