The Sprawling Reach of Complex Threats

The 2010s saw a shift in the cybersecurity industry, as well as much of the rest of the IT landscape, from on-premise to cloud. This progression was occasioned by innovations in various technologies and in the ways the industry had adapted to a great many changes in the landscape. Unfortunately, it was also mirrored by the evolution of cyberthreats, which had gone a long way from basic and intermittent to complex and persistent. A testament to this was the high-profile threats that made their marks in the security landscape of the last year of the decade, which were notably diverse in terms of the entities and platforms they affected.

Ransomware operators zeroed in on government organizations, and deployed attacks that exhibited technical efficiency and were laced with next-level intimidation tactics. A popular office suite became even more favored among phishers, and cyberespionage campaigns showed an increasing inclination toward compromising mobile devices.

Vulnerabilities continued to set the alarm bells ringing, most blaringly with the disclosure of a “wormable” flaw in a widely used software protocol. In addition, the internet of things (IoT) remained fertile ground for botnets that exploited old and known weaknesses.

Supply chain attacks were in the spotlight thanks mainly to a notorious consortium of hacking groups that targeted e-commerce websites. Threats to software development tools and platforms, particularly those associated with the collaborative approach known as DevOps, became more prominent. And detection-evading “fileless” threats ironically made their presence more felt in the cases of different systems and platforms hit by malware that incorporated them.

Already, enterprises are faced with the challenging tasks of integrating and maintaining cloud, IoT, mobile, and other technologies into their infrastructures. But there is another task that enterprises would do well not to give short shrift to — that of securing their infrastructures at all layers, especially since the landscape is becoming increasingly riddled with complex and persistent threats that could have an impact on their operations, reputations, and bottom lines.

Our latest annual security roundup takes a deep dive into the most important issues that shaped the threat landscape of 2019, thereby providing enterprises with insights into the best practices and strategies for protecting their infrastructures from current and emerging threats.