Newly released data has shown that more than 111 million malware attacked Windows operating systems devices in 2020.

Data published on Tuesday by the Atlas VPN team revealed this.

The findings were based on the ‘State of Malware’ report by Malwarebytes.

“Out of all the Windows malware threats detected last year, 83 percent or nearly 92.3 million were found on consumer devices, while 15 percent or 16.7 million were discovered on business devices. 

“The remaining two percent of the malware cases were unspecified,” it stated.

With a 12 percent drop in Windows malware detections from 2019 to 2020, “malware infections affecting consumer devices fell by 11 percent from 103.5 million in 2019 to 92.3 million in 2020” while “business device infections decreased by 24 percent, from 22 million in 2019 to 16.7 million in 2020.”

According to analysts, the low numbers of malware infections could mean that cybercriminals are already exploiting better effective cyberspace methods against their unsuspecting victims. 

Among malware infections that thrived in 2020 are HackTool, which spiralled by 150 percent from 7.4 million to 18.4 million; Rogue saw a 117 percent rise while Spyware had a 28 percent surge.

Other malware, such as adware which was the most predominant malware last year, accounted for 32 percent or 35.5 million Windows malware cases in 2020, representing a 22 percent drop from 45.7 million in 2019 while Trojan accounted for 29.9 million infections amounting to 27 percent of such infections last year.

To further curtail cybercriminals’ activities and their malware, Microsoft Windows users were advised to keep their software up-to-date, be careful about downloads, not to click on suspicious links, limit their file sharing and use a VPN.