Book Image

Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies

By : Tim Rains
Book Image

Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies

By: Tim Rains

Overview of this book

After scrutinizing numerous cybersecurity strategies, Microsoft’s former Global Chief Security Advisor in this book helps you understand the efficacy of popular cybersecurity strategies and more. Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies offers an unprecedented long-term view of the global threat landscape by examining the twenty-year trend in vulnerability disclosures and exploitation, nearly a decade of regional differences in malware infections, the socio-economic factors that underpin them, and how global malware has evolved. This will give you further perspectives into malware protection for your organization. It also examines internet-based threats that CISOs should be aware of. The book will provide you with an evaluation of the various cybersecurity strategies that have ultimately failed over the past twenty years, along with one or two that have actually worked. It will help executives and security and compliance professionals understand how cloud computing is a game changer for them. By the end of this book, you will know how to measure the effectiveness of your organization’s cybersecurity strategy and the efficacy of the vendors you employ to help you protect your organization and yourself.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)
9
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10
Index

The Evolution of the Threat Landscape – Malware

I have always thought of malware as a synonym for "attackers' automation." Purveyors of malware seek to compromise systems for a range of motivations, as I described in Chapter 1, Ingredients for a Successful Cybersecurity Strategy. Any system that sends and receives email, surfs the web, or takes other forms of input can be attacked, regardless of whether it was manufactured in Redmond, Raleigh, Cupertino, Helsinki, or anywhere else. The AV-TEST Institute, one of the world's premier independent anti-virus testing labs, based in Germany, has one of the world's largest malware collections. (AV-Test Institute, 2020) They have accumulated this collection over 15 years. "Every day, the AV-TEST Institute registers over 350,000 new malicious programs (malware) and potentially unwanted applications (PUA)" (AV-Test Institute, 2020). The statistics that they have published indicate that the volume of...