Escalating Threats The data show that we have shifted away from a world in which IT security is partly an afterthought with a budget line item to be minimized as much as possible, in favor of an environment in which the very survival of the business depends upon embedding security into every facet of the infrastructure and every upgrade to that infrastructure. This observation is also matched by anecdotal accounts from people very deep in the IT security field. “The attacks are getting more severe and they’re getting more common,” said Ray Watson, VP of tech- nology at Masergy, a twenty-year pioneer in providing secure software-defined networking services for global enterprises. “Enterprises also facing attacks from many different directions. It’s no longer just the ‘hacker-in-a hoodie’ so to speak. It’s also unskilled ‘script kiddies’ [who use other people’s scripts and programs to launch attacks], competitive threats, insiders, cybergangs, all the way up to nation states. “With the growth of things like toolkits and ransomware-as-a-service, an extremely unsophisticated attacker can now purchase targeted exploits, enabling them to do significant damage,” Watson add- ed. “The rewards can be high, and the risks are low, especially in countries that don’t extradite to the United States. In short, it’s an unfair fight, and the advantage currently goes to the attackers. This is why successful companies partner with a managed security provider.” Daily vulnerability scans leveraging AI and ML would not be overkill in this environment. “More companies than you think have already been breached!” exclaimed Adam Burke, sales VP at Quest Technology Management, which conducts compromise assessments for customers, and finds active exploits roughly 70% of the time. “The attacks typically run in a six to 12-month cycle. In most cases they will spend that time looking for what they can steal and exploit while covering their tracks all the way. When they feel like they’ve got everything, they will withdraw, but will usually launch a ransomware attack on their way out.” Ransomware is one of the most formidable types of attacks against corporations. In these exploits, the cybercriminals encrypt the company’s data, effectively holding it hostage until a ransom is paid. In most cases, the attack is enabled by a phishing campaign that fooled an insider into clicking on a malicious link. This threat vector has been under way for approximately 30 years, remains extremely effective, and continues to rise in frequency of occurrence. Copyright © 2020 AVANT Communications, Inc. 13