![\"1709\"](\"http:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/17091.jpg\")
What\u2019s your plan of attack for 2014? Have you entered the year fully armed to deal with the threats that invade the periphery of your network each day? Do you have contingency plans in place to react to the attacks that evade your defenses, usually due to malware or malicious links that surf past your DMZ like it wasn\u2019t even there? Are your users properly trained and confident in their ability to recognize what a threat looks like?<\/p>\n
A new year is largely a symbolic thing, but it should be a reminder and a wake-up call for all of us, to think about security, threats, and response. As the year begins anew, reports and studies start to appear, and they\u2019re invaluable tools in the threat assessment arena, if for no other reason than to remind us to keep our guard up. The venerable folks at Cisco Systems are well-known for their annual security report, and for many of us, getting a look at the report is like Christmas all over again.<\/p>\n
Last week, Cisco released its 2014 Annual Security Report<\/a>, and if you haven\u2019t gotten it yet, please go out and do so. It reads like an ancient tome presaging the future, with an unsettling look at what happened in 2013 and a helpful look into what we might expect in the coming year.<\/p>\n There are a several key themes in Cisco\u2019s report, mainly new malware schemes, the exploitation of trust, and campaigns that target specific organizations and exploit their vulnerabilities. \u201cMalicious actors continue to innovate ways to exploit public trust to effect harmful consequences,\u201d the report warns, and from those words we can take away the most important theme for 2014: do not let your guard down.<\/p>\n Cisco reports three main findings resulting from their research:<\/p>\n The report also highlights cloud computing, recognizing that businesses need to adopt the cloud if they\u2019re to remain competitive; but security gaps in the existing technology are quickly being exploited by cybercriminals, who are \u201cworking faster to exploit the gaps that nonintegrated point solutions simply cannot address. And they are succeeding because they have the resources to be more nimble.\u201d<\/p>\n At the heart of the threat posed by modern cybercriminals is trust, and while it\u2019s by no means a new theme, Cisco warns that we need to be perpetually vigilant. \u201cThere should be an assumption by all users, perhaps, that nothing in the cyber world can or should be trusted. And security professionals may do their organizations a service by not trusting any network traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n The report points out that trust, generally, suffered a setback in 2013, due in large part to Edward Snowden\u2019s whistleblowing. The revelations released by Snowden have helped to uncover \u201cpotential risks of both unintentional vulnerabilities and intentional \u201cbackdoors\u201d in technology products\u2014and whether vendors are doing enough to prevent these weaknesses and protect end users.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019ve all seen the reports: spam is on a decline<\/a>, due in large part to the increased attack vector adopted by cybercriminals. Rather than blast email campaigns in a shotgun approach, the crooks are using a campaign-type approach<\/a>, utilizing social media and SMS spam in addition to email spam. They\u2019re also being more specific in their attacks, opting to identify the target and tailor their campaigns. Sometimes, email spam is used as a tool to obfuscate an attack<\/a> in progress.<\/p>\n And malware is becoming far more dangerous. Cisco points out the Boston Marathon bombing in April as an example of how spammers take advantage of global events and users ripe for the picking. \u201cSpammers prey on people\u2019s desire for more information in the wake of a major event. When spammers give online users what they want, it\u2019s much easier to trick them into a desired action, such as clicking an infected link.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s much more in the Cisco report, and it\u2019s highly recommended reading. If nothing else, it helps us to understand a little of what\u2019s going on in the minds of the cybercriminals, and maybe that will help us get a leg-up on them in the coming year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What\u2019s your plan of attack for 2014? Have you entered the year fully armed to deal with the threats that invade the periphery of your… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[11,9,10,8,7],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","category-spam","tag-allspammedup","tag-bot","tag-botnet","tag-malware","tag-spam","jsn-master"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1710,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions\/1710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Key Findings<\/h1>\n
Attacks against infrastructure are targeting significant resources across the Internet<\/h2>\n
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Malicious actors are using trusted applications to exploit gaps in perimeter security<\/h2>\n
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Investigations of multinational companies show evidence of internal compromise.<\/h2>\n
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Trust no-one<\/h2>\n
Spam is not going away<\/h2>\n