Email threats become more focused and malware gets harder to detect

web threats

Spam emails containing malware significantly dropped in 2018, to just six percent, down from 26 percent in 2017. But at the same time malware is becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect.

These are among the findings of the latest Global Security Report from Trustwave. The largest single category of malware encountered is downloaders at 13 percent.

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Ransomware detections up 200 percent with businesses the main target

Ransomware

The latest quarterly threat research from Malwarebytes for Q1 2019 reveals a 200 percent jump in ransomware and continued increase in business targets for cyberthreats.

This shift back to ransomware comes in the wake of a continued decline in cryptomining, as well as an increased focus on mobile attacks and large-scale business invasions.

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Virtual support agent streamlines service desk management

call center

One of the biggest challenges for service desk teams is striking the right balance between business-critical projects and keeping up with everyday problems and requests.

To help relieve this problem, ManageEngine, the IT management division of Zoho, is incorporating Zia, Zoho's AI assistant, as a virtual IT support agent in its cloud-based service desk software, ServiceDesk Plus.

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IoT devices put healthcare networks at risk

Healthcare data

The proliferation of healthcare Internet-of-things devices, along with unpartitioned networks, insufficient access controls and the reliance on legacy systems, has exposed a vulnerable attack surface that can be exploited by cybercriminals, according to a new report.

The study by network threat detection specialist Vectra also shows gaps in policies and procedures can result in errors by healthcare staff members.

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AI-powered predictive engagement helps businesses keep customers

Artificial intelligence

New research from customer engagement company Freshworks reveals that 56 percent of consumers are willing to drop a brand after a single bad experience.

The survey of 3,000 individual consumers across the US, UK, Germany, France, India, and Australia, demonstrates that 69 percent have a clear preference for brands that offer proactive notifications and service.

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Employees put sensitive data at risk in workplace chat sessions

Chat network

Around a quarter of employees share confidential information via chat sessions, and a similar number talk badly about their boss, while 78 percent wouldn’t care if some of this information was exposed publicly.

These are among the findings of a new study by secure collaboration platform Symphony which surveyed over 1,500 employees in the US and UK about their workplace communication habits.

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Over half of data-driven initiatives are failing

success v failure

More than half of data-driven initiatives are failing in business, with 27 percent of failures due to a skills shortage according to new research from analytic database company Exasol.

In the public sector, financial services and energy and utilities companies the failure rate rises to more than 60 percent. And in retail and financial services 40 percent blame skills shortages for failures.

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All endpoint security tools eventually fail

Endpoint protection

The endpoint is on the front line of the network security battle, but a new study from Absolute reveals that endpoint security tools and agents fail, reliably and predictably.

The study analyzed data from six million devices and one billion change events over the course of a year. It finds the complexity of endpoint device controls creates a false sense of security among organizations while, in reality, causing security gaps and significant risks due to regular and reliable tool failure.

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Tracking the continuing bad bot arms race

robot skull

In 2018 bad bots accounted for one in five website requests (20.4 percent of web traffic), while good bots decreased slightly to make up 17.5 percent of traffic.

This is among the findings of Distil Networks' latest annual Bad Bot Report which investigated hundreds of billions of bad bot requests from 2018 over thousands of domains to provide deeper insight into the daily automated attacks.

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Security, connectivity and data analysis are top IoT developer concerns

IoT devices

A new survey of IoT developers reveals their top concerns are security (38 percent of respondents), connectivity (21 percent), and data collection and analysis (19 percent).

Performance (18 percent), privacy (18 percent), and standards (16 percent) are also areas cited as particularly challenging. These findings come from The Eclipse Foundation which has surveyed more than 1,700 developers via its IoT Working Group.

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AMD brings more performance to embedded processors

AMD Ryzen 1000

The rise of edge devices, customer service terminals, digital signage and so on has led to increased demand for embedded processing.

Chip maker AMD is expanding its offering in this market with the launch of the new Ryzen Embedded R1000 Series SoC. This offers embedded customers dual core, quad-threaded performance, as well as the ability to run fanless, low power solutions for 4K displays, while providing leading-edge security features.

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Understanding the Brazilian hacking community [Q&A]

Brazil flag keyboard

We tend to think of hacking communities as being concentrated in the Far East or the former Soviet bloc, but of course there hackers elsewhere that we don't hear so much about.

Researchers at Recorded Future have been investigating hacking communities around the world, and their latest report covers Brazil.

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New platform helps search and analysis of cloud-stored data

Cloud

As companies store ever larger amounts of data, the current solutions and services available to handle it become more and more costly and difficult to manage.

To address these challenges, Boston-based CHAOSSEARCH is launching a new platform that delivers rapid search and analytics through a managed service, based on simple, elastic storage.

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Government websites top the charts for online trust

Trust card

The Internet Society's Online Trust Alliance (OTA), which identifies and promotes online security and privacy best practices, announced today the results of its latest Online Trust Audit and Honor Roll.

The Audit finds that 70 percent of analyzed websites qualified for the Honor Roll, the highest proportion ever, and up from 52 percent in 2017, driven primarily by improvements in email authentication and session encryption.

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Energy industry vulnerable to attacks on outdated systems

Cooling towers

Critical infrastructure sites and energy distribution facilities are increasingly being targeted by cybercriminals. But many of the systems in use today were installed and built before 24/7 internet connections.

A new report from Finnish cybersecurity company F-Secure highlights the fact that cybersecurity was not a realistic threat when these systems were manufactured, and legacy protocols and systems never had the built-in security controls that we take for granted today. Connecting these systems to the internet has opened them up to attacks from myriad angles.

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