“Cybercrime now accounts for 30% of crime in over half of the countries covered by [the] 2025/2026 Asia and South Pacific Cyberthreat Assessment Report,” Interpol reported — a stark numerical opening to a region-wide picture of rapidly rising digital harm.
Interpol’s 2025/2026 Asia and South Pacific Cyberthreat Assessment Report
The policing network’s study, sponsored by the UK government, assessed cybercrime trends across 18 Southeast Asian countries and Pacific Island states. Interpol found that a third of those countries reported more than 10,000 cases of online scams, and that the criminal landscape in the region is changing as quickly as its digital footprint. Interpol also argued that the findings “reflect an urgent need for strengthened cross-border collaboration, improved intelligence sharing, and comprehensive capacity-building initiatives.”
Scams, social engineering and the scale of threats
Online scams — described in the report as relying heavily on social engineering — were identified as a major driver of the surge. The report highlights spear‑phishing, smishing and AI‑generated messages as increasingly prevalent tactics impacting individuals, enterprises and governmental bodies. Interpol cited TrendAI figures showing 6.5 billion cyber threats were detected and mitigated across the Asia and South Pacific region in 2024 alone, underscoring the sheer scale of the industry built around digital fraud.
Ransomware, DDoS, deepfakes and data breaches
Beyond scams, the report ranks other threats by significance: infostealers and banking trojans were the second “most significant” threat, followed by ransomware, deepfakes and misinformation, and business email compromise (BEC). The study supplied several striking metrics for 2024: over 135,000 ransomware‑related attacks were detected, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks increased by 92% year on year, and discussions about deepfakes on cybercrime forums and Telegram channels popular among Southeast Asian threat actors rose 600% between February and June 2024. System intrusions accounted for roughly 80% of all data breaches in 2024, with malware present in 83% and ransomware present in 51% of those breaches.
Digital adoption, cloud risk and economic impact
Interpol ties the surge to the region’s rapid digitalization. The report notes that widespread adoption of cloud computing, AI, mobile banking and remote work has accelerated transformation while exposing critical security gaps — notably limited cloud security safeguards, inadequate incident response readiness and insufficient cross‑border information sharing. Economically, the effects vary: half of the surveyed countries reported financial losses exceeding $10,000 during the reporting period, and several reported losses of $100m.
What this means for law enforcement, enterprises, and individuals
- Law enforcement: Interpol’s findings underscore a demand for enhanced cross‑border collaboration and intelligence sharing; the report highlights ongoing public awareness campaigns and law enforcement training programs already under way in most surveyed countries.
- Enterprises and security teams: Two‑thirds of the surveyed countries have adopted AI tools for predictive analysis, digital forensics and threat detection — reflecting an emphasis on technology to counter rising threats such as infostealers, BEC and ransomware targeting sectors like real estate, manufacturing and financial services.
- Individuals and consumers: The report’s behavioral metrics are sobering — 5.5 out of every 1,000 individuals in the region clicked on phishing links monthly (about twice the global average), with cloud applications named as the main targets — reinforcing why public awareness campaigns have become a widespread response.
Interpol’s account is both statistical and prescriptive: the numbers document a region where criminal technique and scale have outpaced protections in many places, and the recommendations are explicit. Most surveyed countries have begun public education and law enforcement training, and a majority are deploying AI for defensive use, but Interpol emphasizes that those steps must be matched by stronger cross‑border cooperation and capacity building if the region is to blunt organized cybercrime’s growth.
The report leaves a clear operational question in its wake: as digital services and cloud adoption deepen across Southeast Asia and the Pacific, will governments and organizations close the cloud security and incident‑response gaps that Interpol identifies, and will intelligence sharing keep pace with the transnational character of these crimes?
