Book Image

Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies - Second Edition

By : Tim Rains
3 (2)
Book Image

Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies - Second Edition

3 (2)
By: Tim Rains

Overview of this book

Tim Rains is Microsoft's former Global Chief Security Advisor and Amazon Web Services’ former Global Security Leader for Worldwide Public Sector. He has spent the last two decades advising private and public sector organizations all over the world on cybersecurity strategies. Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies, Second Edition builds upon the success of the first edition that has helped so many aspiring CISOs, and cybersecurity professionals understand and develop effective data-driven cybersecurity strategies for their organizations. In this edition, you’ll examine long-term trends in vulnerability disclosures and exploitation, regional differences in malware infections and the socio-economic factors that underpin them, and how ransomware evolved from an obscure threat to the most feared threat in cybersecurity. You’ll also gain valuable insights into the roles that governments play in cybersecurity, including their role as threat actors, and how to mitigate government access to data. The book concludes with a deep dive into modern approaches to cybersecurity using the cloud. By the end of this book, you will have a better understanding of the threat landscape, how to recognize good Cyber Threat Intelligence, and how to measure the effectiveness of your organization's cybersecurity strategy.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
13
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Index

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

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 antimalware 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 have been accused of improperly sharing information collected by their products ...