Internet Security Report, Quarter 2, 2019

It’s September, which in the U.S. means the end of summer but the beginning of the American football season. Along with real football comes Fantasy Football, where groups of friends and co-workers “fake draft” real football players into imaginary teams and see which of them would have won pretend games based on each individual player’s real performance. If you’re into sports, stats, and a little fun competition, Fantasy Football is an entertaining past time. However, if you want to win, you’ll have to understand long-term, historical player trends. Sure, last week’s player results, or even three years of a player’s results can’t perfectly predict what that player will score next week. The universe is full of entropy. However, statistically you’ll have a much better chance of understanding how a player will perform in the future if you take a large enough sample of his past into account.

WatchGuard’s quarterly Internet Security Report (ISR) is the historical “player statistics” of the threat landscape. The more you know about what attackers have been doing the past quarter – or even the past few years – the more you will understand what they’ll likely do in the future. Obviously, this knowledge gives you a big leg up in your defense, allowing you to win your threat landscape pool. And unlike fantasy games, that pool has real-world consequences if you lose.

This report includes detailed threat intelligence about the top and most-widespread malware, the most common network attacks seen in the wild, and the top domains targeting your users. In short, it’s the historical attack data that can help you pick your security starter lineup for next quarter. Besides the raw numbers, our Threat Lab experts also offer their detailed analysis and opinions on the data we report, acting as the top fantasy sports commentator to your threat landscape league. If you’re responsible for securing your organization, or even marginally interested in protecting yourself online, this report should help you win more matches against cyber criminals… and who doesn’t
want to win their fantasy sport pool.

If you play fantasy sports, you’re probably someone who likes to win; especially when money is on the line. In information security, your business’s money is always on the line, potentially costing you millions if you lose the next game. That’s why fantasy players often turn to advice from the experts. Let us act as your threat landscape experts by reading this quarter’s report.