As 2018 comes to a close and we look ahead toward the new year, now is the time for reflection and planning. And for businesses of all sizes and industries, cyber security should be a major topic of discussion through this process. When it comes to information security, there isn’t a company out there that can afford not to ask the tough questions. When was the last time you reassessed your security strategy? Are you aware of the latest attack techniques? Is your organization equipped to protect employees that work remotely? The list goes on.
To help businesses better understand today’s threat landscape and how to prepare for it, WatchGuard’s CTO Corey Nachreiner has published a two-part series on Forbes that explores the top five cyber threats organizations face today. Here’s an excerpt from the piece that outlines the dangers of fileless malware and how to defend against it:
“For decades now, criminals have designed their malware to be persistent, or capable of lingering on your computer and even surviving a reboot. In order to retain this persistence, malware drops at least one file on your computer and changes things like your registry settings in order to restart upon reboot.
Recently, however, something called fileless malware has gained prevalence. Unlike traditional malware, this type of threat only loads itself in your computer’s volatile memory (RAM), sometimes piggy-backing on top of another existing and legitimate process running on your computer. Though files like malicious Word documents are sometimes leveraged to load this malware, these threats don’t need to use files at all. For instance, attackers can use software vulnerabilities to execute code directly on your computer and then leverage that access to load fileless malware.
So, what can you do about it? Consider endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions or other anti-malware offerings that look beyond files and registry settings. It’s important that these solutions pay attention to the processes running on your computer and look for other memory injection techniques that cybercriminals might use to launch fileless threats.”
But that’s not the only threat that should be top of mind in 2019 and beyond. Corey also covers major attack methods like cryptojackers, ransomworms and more in this two-part series. Check out the complete list of the top five threats businesses face today on Forbes. And for a look ahead at what new security threats and trends we might see in the coming year, read about WatchGuard’s 2019 Security Predictions here.