What began as a trickle of phishing campaigns and the occasional malicious app quickly turned into a deluge of malicious URLs, attacks on cloud users and capable threat actors leveraging the world’s thirst for more information on COVID-19 as an entry mechanism into IT systems. So says Raj Samani, pictured, McAfee fellow and chief scientist at the cyber product company, which has released its McAfee Labs Threats Report: November 2020, on cybercriminal activity related to malware and the evolution of cyber threats in the second quarter of 2020.
McAfee launched the McAfee COVID-19 Threats Dashboard to help CISOs and their security teams understand how bad actors have re-targeted increasingly sophisticated techniques toward businesses, governments, schools, and a workforce coping with COVID-19 restrictions and the potential vulnerabilities of remote devices. Malware led among reported attack vectors accounting for 35 per cent of publicly reported incidents.
The company observed nearly 7.5 million external attacks on cloud user accounts. This is based on the aggregation and anonymisation of cloud usage data from more than 30 million McAfee MVISION cloud users worldwide during the second quarter of 2020. This data set represents companies in all major industries. For the 27-page report visit the McAfee website.
Comment
Nigel Hawthorn at McAfee said: “The fact that there have been nearly 7.5 million attacks on users via cloud services in the second quarter of this year highlights how criminals have been quick to pivot attack methods to take advantage of the pandemic. The move to widespread remote working has required many industries to adopt new cloud services to maintain staff productivity, communication and collaboration. When managed correctly, however, the cloud is the most secure place to do business and an incredible driver of business growth, innovation and resiliency. Incorporating cloud into strong data governance policies and regular staff training are the keys to making this a reality.
“Given the surges in the malware we are tracking, IT needs to be able to quickly identify, prioritise and respond to these targeted attacks – across both device and cloud. Technology can play a key role in helping security professionals understand whether their organisation is at risk, what specific threats they are susceptible to, and how they can pre-empt an attack. Combining these insights with a proactive approach will significantly enhance cybersecurity effectiveness against today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape. This must go hand-in-hand with a shared responsibility security model. Cloud security requires a layered defence; from service providers to enterprises and individual users, everyone is accountable in some way and must play their part to protect data against cybercriminals.”
