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
Other Books You May Enjoy
10
Index

The great debate – are anti-malware solutions really worthwhile?

Allow me to offer my opinion on the efficacy of anti-malware software. Over the years, I've heard some cybersecurity experts at industry conferences ridicule the efficacy of anti-malware solutions and recommend that organizations not bother using such solutions. They tend to justify this point of view by pointing out that anti-malware software cannot detect and clean all threats. This is true. They also point out that the anti-malware solutions can have vulnerabilities themselves that can increase the attack surface area instead of reducing it. This is also true. Since anti-malware software typically has access to sensitive parts of operating systems and the data they scan, they can be an effective target for attackers. Some anti-malware vendors have even been accused of using the privileged access to systems that their products have, to provide illicit access to systems (Solon, 2017). Other vendors...