In an unexpected twist, mobile malware infection rates remain down from an early 2020 peak, effecting around 0.12% of mobile devices, according to Nokia.

This decline translates to an almost 50% cut from a March 2020 peak infection rate of 0.23%. The rate of infection is down because mobile app stores are using more sophisticated tools to quickly find and remove apps with malicious behavior, according to the vendor.

Nokia aggregated the findings from more than 200 million devices running on networks that use Nokia's NetGuard Endpoint Security offering.

Indeed, Nokia envisions a growing role for itself in network security across extended detection and response (XDR); security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR); endpoint detection and response (EDR); managed services; and consulting.

The vendor also leans heavily on data gleaned from its Threat Intelligence Lab and algorithms developed at Nokia Bell Labs to bolster its security apparatus for network operators and enterprises, Mary O’Neill, VP of security at Nokia, recently told SDxCentral.

Malware infection rates in North America's fixed networks have also declined throughout the course of 2021 to 2.5%, but still remain well above the low point of 1.1% in March 2020. Nokia attributes this spike to malware-laced applications claiming to provide information on COVID-19 infection rates, testing, vaccine misinformation, and personal protective equipment.

While mobile and fixed malware infection rates are down, supply chain attacks and IoT botnet activity was on the rise during the past year, Nokia concluded in its latest Threat Intelligence Report.

Supply chain attacks such as the SolarWinds breach at the beginning of the year, ransomware attacks such as the one that hit the Colonial Pipeline in May, and COVID-19-related malware attacks are all fueling this rise, according to Nokia.

Meanwhile, IoT remains a troubling outlier as botnet attacks resulted in a 100% surge of IoT device infection rates from 2019 to 2020. Individual botnets reached more than 2 million devices in February 2021.

"Although the growth rate has since slowed, IoT devices still account for 32% of all infected devices," Nokia's security researchers wrote in the report.

Overall, the number of security vulnerabilities discovered each year is on the rise, growing from about 5,000 discoveries in 2010 to roughly 40,000 vulnerabilities today, according to the vendor.

Nokia is particularly concerned and focused on preventing malware in IoT devices, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and security gaps in mobile edge computing, Kevin McNamee, security product manager at Nokia, recently told SDxCentral.

“Given the expanded footprint and attack surface, the ability for the security operations team to be able to visualize what’s going on and take action, particularly automated action, is going to be very, very important, particularly for some of these new things like the mobile edge cloud,” he added. “That’s going to be a challenge with all those sort of multi-vendor applications hanging out at the edge of the network — [they] have to be managed, have to be secure.”