Cyber threats adopt military style in Asia Pacific

Ilustrasi (dok)

SINGAPORE (IndoTelko)  - There has been a tenfold increase in Locky ransomware attacks on companies in Asia Pacific according to Check Point, one of the biggest cyber security firms globally.  

Check Point revealed that the number of attacks on companies in Asia Pacific increased tenfold from 160 attacks in April to 1667 attacks in July 2016. Locky is a ransomware, discovered earlier this year, which encrypts files on an infected system and then demands payment from companies for the encrypted files in Bitcoins.

"There has been a significant increase in cyber-attacks in Asia Pacific and this will only continue to rise. The challenge for organisations is that the authors of these malwares continue to develop variants in attempts to evade detection." Said Rami Ben Efraim, Head of Government and Defence sectors from Check Point.

Over 1000 cyber industry leaders, academic and government representatives and cyber start-up companies gathered at Cybertech Singapore over the two day conference and exhibition to discuss the major cybersecurity threats facing companies, governments and critical infrastructure across Asia and the solutions available to tackle these threats.

"Ten years ago the most advance threats were virus and malwares, today it is moving ahead.  We are seeing more and more advanced threats, more money is being made from cybercrime than from prostitution or drugs.  These are not hackers, they are attackers.  These attackers manage military style campaigns, they learn the targets and the vulnerabilities and they know how to work like Special Forces. It's a battlefield in a civilian arena." said Brigadier General Ariel Karo, Head of Intelligence and Cyber Systems at Rafael, speaking at Cybertech Singapore.

"The current approaches to cyber security are not addressing the issue.  The majority of technology is still devoted towards the perimeter defence, whereas more often than not the threat is already inside the network. Organisations therefore need to adopt an 'immune system' approach to be able to detect threats inside the network early, before a crisis develops." commented Sanjay Aurora, Managing Director of Darktrace, Asia Pacific, a leading cyber threat defence company.(es)