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.