SMART PREVENTION EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

Smart Prevention | White Paper A PROACTIVE APPROACH GIVES ORGANISATIONS BACK THE UPPER HAND Board members are now more aware of the increased threat of cyber-attack. In a BT and KPMG1 study of 2016, 73% of respondents said digital security was on the agenda of board meetings at least quarterly, if not more frequently. But in our experience many executives still fail to understand how every aspect of their business now relies on IT; and as a complex, interconnected digital ecosystem organisations are at risk from one cleverly crafted, highly-targeted email with a malicious attachment. Perhaps this is why so many attacks still take businesses by surprise. When the German Federal Office for...
Smart Prevention | White Paper A PROACTIVE APPROACH GIVES ORGANISATIONS BACK THE UPPER HAND Board members are now more aware of the increased threat of cyber-attack. In a BT and KPMG1 study of 2016, 73% of respondents said digital security was on the agenda of board meetings at least quarterly, if not more frequently. But in our experience many executives still fail to understand how every aspect of their business now relies on IT; and as a complex, interconnected digital ecosystem organisations are at risk from one cleverly crafted, highly-targeted email with a malicious attachment. Perhaps this is why so many attacks still take businesses by surprise. When the German Federal Office for Information Security revealed that an unnamed German steel mill had experienced ‘massive damage’ following a cyberattack, there was apparent disbelief. It was reported that hackers had infiltrated the company’s corporate network with a phishing email that tricked employees into opening a malicious attachment. Once the malware was installed, the attackers were able to move laterally within the steel mill’s IT systems – damaging the production network so that a blast furnace could not shut down, causing significant material damage2. At the time a digital expert said: “We do not expect a steel plant to be connected to the internet and to be hackable – that is quite unexpected.” Every business is a potential target and must take a proactive approach to counter the loss of data that has increased by 400% in the past three years. In the case of the unsuspecting German steel mill, we do not know if the malware embedded in the email attachment was known or unknown; but with our latest prevention solution this is immaterial, as Check Point and BT work together to help organisations expect the unexpected. 1 2 BT and KPMG – Taking the offensive Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/oct/14/how-to-stop-cyber-attacks-on-your-organisation Smart Prevention | White Paper NEW PREVENTION CAPABILITY WITH CHECK POINT AND BT In addition to getting the basics right to counter known threats, organisations need to enhance their prevention capabilities to manage the risks of threats they have not seen before. Attacking with unknown malware increases the likelihood of success for cybercriminals, who need fewer attempts to yield greater results. Even a slight modification to existing malware creates a new, unknown variant that could evade AV solutions. With nearly 12 million new malware variants being discovered every month, more new malware has been discovered in the past two years than in the previous 29 years combined. In the case of the German steel mill the impact, if not immediate, was obvious – but this is not always the case. Statistics show that in some cases, organisations take an average of 256 days to detect a breach4, by which time it is far too late to take positive action and reduce the impact. Managing the risk of new, unexpected malware will require organisations to do things differently, particularly as malware continues to target the files we trust and work with every day, such as PDF, Flash, or Microsoft Office. These files form the life blood of many businesses and hold much of their most sensitive data. But whatever solutions organisations choose to enhance prevention, they do not want to repeat the common frustrations with traditional sandboxing that introduce unacceptable delays to file delivery, or let potential threats through while evaluating files. One of the priorities for any prevention solution must be fast, secure delivery of content that businesses can trust. Check Point and BT are delivering this by combining the most granular CPU-level exploit detection with expert human analysis. In this way, we can expose and help action the most unexpected and camouflaged threats before they enter your network – without slowing down or disrupting users.
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