Shocking reports in the media recently revealed that an intricate cyber-attack has left a bank account of the Road Traffic Management Corporation drained of millions of rands. The five suspects from Pretoria allegedly used high-tech computer software to steal the funds and embarked on a R8,7-million shopping spree before being arrested.
The “that could never happen to me” culture that is so often adopted by businesses is no longer a crutch that should be leaned on. In the current cyber-risk climate, security of your business’s assets, data and intellectual property need to be a top priority. If cyber-criminals can hack into bank accounts of the government then you could definitely become a target.
With the virtualisation of server environments on the increase as businesses migrate to the cloud, Trend Micro warns not to neglect security across the physical, virtual and cloud layers of the business.
“Cyber-attacks like the one that targeted the Road Traffic Management Corporation could have been avoided with the use of technologies that are designed to protect your business in the cloud and at the virtual layer, as an example Trend Micro Deep Security. It should be every security vendor’s job to understand that virtual and cloud computing environments are very different to their physical counterparts and as a result need a different approach to their security,” says Gregory Anderson, country manager at Trend Micro South Africa.
“Our virtual security technology provides a robust solution for cloud computing and virtual environments because it enables the user to take advantage of what we term “better-than-physical” protection. This means that a single platform integrates all security technologies and in turn is able to resolve any operational issues that may arise in the virtual environment.”
Trend Micro’s Deep Security Solution delivers comprehensive, adaptive, highly efficient, agentless and agent-based protection, including anti-malware, intrusion detection and prevention, firewall, web application protection, integrity monitoring and log inspection. With Deep Security businesses will be aware of security breaches and will have advanced protection for physical, virtual and cloud servers.
However these attacks are seldom singular in nature, and companies need to also look for network-wide monitoring security solution that provides advance threat protection. Such as Trend Micro’s Deep Discovery, which helps customers not only detect and analyse APTs/ targeted attacks but can also rapidly and in real-time, adapt protection across an enterprise to respond to these attacks.
Deep Discovery forms part of the Trend Micro Custom Defence solution that detects unknown threats and is designed to provide clients with a security solution that works across the entire network to deliver network-wide monitoring powered by custom sandboxing and relevant real-time intelligence. All of which enables early attack detection, rapid containment and the delivery of custom security updates.
“Targeted attacks like this one on the Road Traffic Management Corporation are one of the biggest challenges in both the public and private sectors currently. These attacks are designed to breach firms by stealth, infect systems with zero-day threats and lay hidden inside networks for as long as possible while lifting sensitive data,” he adds.
Stealth security products like Deep Discovery provide the best detection with the fewest false positives and the greatest coverage by identifying malicious content, communications and behaviour across every stage of the attack sequence.
It can do this because it is designed to monitor your specific environment for malicious content, communication, behaviour as well as its use of detection methods tailored to your specific host configurations. Another benefit is the fact that it leverages deep threat analysis to generate custom updates to your protection points and provides you the customer, tailored and relevant intelligence to guide rapid response.
With the right technology you can protect your business from targeted attacks, malware, spyware and phishing. Businesses need to be aware that cybercriminals are becoming increasingly cunning and cyber-attacks, increasingly sophisticated which in turn means that security should be beefed up.