Unknown malware continues its exponential and evolutionary growth, according to the Check Point Security Report and SANS 2016 Threat Landscape Study.
Researchers found a 9x increase in the amount of unknown malware plaguing businesses. This was fueled by the employees, who downloaded a new unknown malware every four seconds. In total, there were nearly 12 million new malware variants discovered every month, with more new
malware discovered in the past two years than the previous decade.
"With billions of new connections formed every minute, the world is more globally linked than ever. Innovations like cloud, mobility and IoT are changing the way we deploy, the way we consume, and the way we secure technology," said Amnon Bar-Lev, president, Check Point. “More and more malware is being put into our ecosystem that traditional security techniques are powerless to prevent. Given this, staying a leader requires being one step ahead of things you cannot see, know or control - and preventing attacks before they happen."
The report also revealed that security is lagging behind the speedy, on-the-go mobile device. With smartphones and tablets accounting for 60 percent of digital media time spent, businesses' mobile devices present both an access curse and a business productivity blessing.
While employees do not want to be the cause of a company network breach, 1-in-5 will cause one through either mobile malware or malicious Wi-Fi.
Endpoints represent the starting points for most threats. Among the businesses surveyed, endpoints were the most common cause of breaches and the most critical component in cyber defenses, with attackers leveraging email in 75 percent of cases. Also, 39 percent of endpoint
attacks bypassed the network gateway firewalls, and routine operations uncovered 85 percent of threats after they had already gotten inside the enterprise.
Both reports conclude forward-looking security starts with having a best-of-breed architecture in order to address the current and future complexities of securing IT. Researchers found a common theme of advanced threat prevention, mobile device protection and segmenting a network all critical components for the modern enterprise.