Bengaluru, Jan 23 (IANS): Exhibiting progress in fighting cyber criminals, cyber threats in India declined in 2019 compared to 2018, said a global cyber security company.

"From 2018 to 2019, there has been a moderate decrease in the number of attacks targeted at India," said cyber security giant Kaspersky in a statement.

According to Kaspersky, a Russian company founded in 1997, 38.8 per cent of all the company's security solutions users were attacked at least once through web-based attacks in 2019 compared to 40.4 per cent users in 2018.

"In India we did see a decrease in the number of adware and malware attacks, however there has been a huge increase in riskware attacks from 28 per cent in 2018 to 39 per cent in 2019," said Saurabh Sharma, senior security researcher, Kaspersky.

Sharma said anti-virus solutions may not be able to determine whether a specific item of riskware represents a threat.

Kaspersky detected 23 crore local threats or local infections in India in 2019 against 29 crore such attacks in 2018, which occur through the spread of malware via USB drives, CDs, DVDs and other offline methods.

The Russian company ranked India at the 14th spot worldwide in the number of attacks caused by servers hosted in India, counting them at 81 lakh incidents in 2019.

Kaspersky's South Asia general manager Dipesh Kaura said cyber security is the most troubled area for any large enterprise.

"The plan is to create more awareness. We also have a very robust plan to engage with our channel partners so that we can work together to combat cyber threats and build a safer world together," said Kaura.