The “known” economic damage from cyber criminals is estimated to cost the global economy nearly $113 billion a year1. It is far more than this estimate, due to unreported or unknown damages, loss of intellectual property, public embarrassment and loss of business due to breach of trust.
According to Trend Micro, spear phishing has become the number one way to penetrate computers and networks and steal valuable resources — 91% of all Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) involve spear-phishing2. APTs – are covert and continuous targeting of computers and networks to infiltrate a specific entity. APTs target organizations and nations for business or political gains.
From governments, to public and private organizations, to people, it is happening worldwide. It’s insane growth and damage is often supported and underwritten by organizations, countries and political groups.
Even Defense Departments, Finance, Health and other organizations with highly sensitive information have been penetrated.
New developments by the world’s leading security experts have blocked most of the damaging infiltration tactics by sophisticated cyber criminals. We all can take comfort in that. They have done a masterful job.
However, sophisticated cyber criminals work hard to develop workarounds to the newest security protocols. It is a spy/counter spy game. Unfortunately for the targeted victims, some toxic trickle always gets through.
All current security protocols, spam filters, antivirus, bad url tracking, “detonators”, and forensics, fail under persistent attacks by cyber criminals for one real reason, you or your coworkers fall prey to the remaining toxic trickle of spear phishing attacks that get through your, or your organization’s, most rigorous defenses.
There is even debate amongst security providers and security experts that antivirus approaches may be dead3.
The best way to visualize what is happening is seeing your organization’s management and employees as facing a firing squad of ten riflemen. Eight and possibly even nine of the firing squads bullets can be contained by the newest security protocols. But one or two get through to the end user. If even one gets through, the end user, and your organization, are just as dead as they would be if all ten got through.
That is why you need to show the end user and easy way to avoid the bullets that do get through. Then they, and the organization, will live through this particular firing squad incident as well as the countless ones that will come after.
New security approaches empower the user to visually see which emails are safe and which are suspect. The new approaches prevent cyber Infiltration and theft of intellectual property, authentication credentials and financial and other sensitive information at their source by empowering the end user so they can avoid the drastic damage done by a single click on a poisonous link or document4.
The new security approaches take advantage of the existing security protocols and add to them, to prevent the terrible consequences of a mistake by a single user. They also have the additional benefits of allowing the user to quickly see who wants to contact them and what they want to impart.
To find out more, see
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or contact Courtney Anderson at W 415-384-3040, Mobile 415-299-0045 or ca@coalesce.com
References:
(1) 2013 Norton Report.http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/18475/cyber-crime/2013-norton-report.htm
(2) 2012 Trend Micro report. http://www.trendmicro.com/cloud-content/us/pdfs/security-intelligence/white-papers/wp-spear-phishing-email-most-favored-apt-attack-bait.pdf
(3) Antivirus is Dead: Long Live Antivirus! http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/05/antivirus-is-dead-long-live-antivirus/#more-25861
(4) FBI warns of increased spear phishing attacks. http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240187487/FBI-warns-of-increased-spear-phishing-attacks
Dr. Courtney Anderson, CEO
Coalesce Corporation
447 Miller Ave, Suite E
Mill Valley, CA 94941
www.coalesce.com/new
courtney.anderson@gmail.com