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The Application Whitelisting and Security Weblog

Strategies for combating targeted attacks

Earlier this week, I wrote how modern day targeted attacks don’t lend themselves to today’s security solutions. I’d like to follow up those thoughts by exploring strategies for combating these types of highly calculated threats.

While organizations focus on their business growth, they are also forced to contend with cyber criminals targeting their corporate networks to steal valuable information that can make them lots of money. As a result, evolving fraud professionals are truly changing how businesses protect their private data and fight cyber crime. ( Read More… )

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[...] 2. Strategies for combating targeted attacks Because modern day targeted attacks don’t lend themselves to today’s security solutions, evolving ...

Custom malware is the foundation of today’s targeted cyber attacks… Just ask the Treasury!

Cyber crime has evolved from mass attacks intended to wreck havoc and steal as much data as possible to highly targeted attacks looking for specific information from an organization. Custom malware, designed to bypass legacy endpoint security, forms the foundation of these attacks. As a result, these calculated attacks are becoming more dangerous for the businesses and government entities hackers are targeting. ( Read More… )

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Top endpoint security stories for April 2010 – April sees cyber crime in full bloom

April showers may bring May flowers, but the Internet also saw something else in full bloom — cyber crime. Computer systems around the globe experienced a variety of problems in April ranging from more fake antivirus software to malicious code that avoids detection from search engine Web crawlers. But none were as big as a well-publicized faulty security update that crashed thousands of computers and became a public relations nightmare for one of the world’s top security software makers. Here were some of the top security stories from April 2010: ( Read More… )

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Defective McAfee update could have been avoided. Here’s how…

Yesterday, we saw yet another example of how antivirus — not malicious code — can leave thousands of PCs useless.

What intended to be a routine McAfee software update to its antivirus definitions for corporate customers has likely turned into a costly nightmare for the antivirus software maker and many of its customers. Instead of updating the security software, the faulty virus definitions removed the Svchost.exe file, a critical component of the Windows operating system. ( Read More… )

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The Whitelist product I used did not allow changed files to run until they were approved. In my case ...

In 2009, Symantec stopped 100 attacks per second… wonder how many were missed?

If you haven’t already come across Symantec’s new Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR), ponder this — in 2009, the world’s largest security software maker blocked an average of 100 potential attacks per second. In the article, “Cybercrime’s Financial and Geographic Growth Shows No Slowdown during the Global Economic Crisis,” last year hackers were more active than ever. According to Stephen Trilling, senior VP of Symantec’s Security Technology and Response Division, the continuing growth of more sophisticated cyber threats has become an international problem that we can no longer afford to ignore. ( Read More… )

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