IF your chief cybersecurity technology officer started his career as a young boy, hacking his school’s database to change his grade, you know you are in good hands.
This early interest in cybersecurity and the workings of the hacking landscape has given IntSights’ Etay Maor Chief Security Officer, a clear and somewhat intuitive look into the cybercriminal activities, himself becoming a white hacker and learning how to put his skills to protecting the web from cybercrime.
“Today, in these pandemic times, there is a sharp increase in the incidences of cybercriminal activity. Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the pandemic to gain access to information that may be profitable for them,” Maor said responding to a question from tech journalists at an online forum that launched Defend Forward and introduced the company’s expansion in the Asia Pacific region where there is a rapid increase in cybercriminal activities.
“As enterprises in Asia Pacific expand their digital footprint to engage with their audience, they are increasingly aware of the need to stem vulnerabilities from cyber threats originating from the external environment,” Michael Tan, regional sales director of Asia, IntSights said while emphasizing that with the company’s expansion, it strives to maximize collaboration with partners and equip more organizations with actionable threat intelligence that will empower them to proactively identify, guard against and take down threats.
Based out of its Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore with presence in Hong Kong and Japan, the company’s regional business is anchored by a growing team of experts from sales and pre-sales to systems engineering, channels and customer success.
“Asia Pacific is a vital market for IntSights as more organizations are looking for a next-generation cyber intelligence solution to put in place appropriate safeguards before attacks happen,” Jason Thompson, COO & CMO, IntSights commented.
Defend Forward is its own campaign that gathers intelligence from the deep and the dark web. By mapping this intelligence a well-orchestrated mitigation and coordinated proactive response is created to dismantle and block threats before they cause damage.
“Technologies like AI, ML are part of the equation, but understanding business strategy and looking at every possible place threats can come from offers a layer of security which our External Threat Protection suite can supply,” Maor said explaining how its partner network, operations and support capabilities to extend the scope and power of ETP.
“The Cyber Threat Impact of COVID-19 to Businesses,” a report produced by IntSights, outlined how cybercriminals and state-sponsored advanced threat groups are exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to attack networks around the world for both financial and strategic gain.
Between January and March, coronavirus-themed phishing lures, malware infections, network intrusions, scams, and disinformation campaigns have become rampant across the clear, deep, and dark web. IntSights researchers put together this report to explore the most prevalent COVID-19 cyber threats: phishing websites and emails, fake coronavirus mobile apps, malware, ransomware, fraud, and disinformation.
During the forum Maor also tackled briefly how criminal and state-sponsored threat actors are behind some of these campaigns that meddle with a country’s political situation, and even outcomes of elections.
Based on the report, the number of registered domains with keywords ‘corona’ and ‘covid’ surged to a whopping 38,000+ in March 2020 alone, up from only 190 in the year 2019. It also found that deep and dark web markets are seeing an influx of different COVID-19 related products, scam templates and hoaxes. It is critical that enterprises rethink their strategy on ramping up their threat monitoring tools, and that their end-users do not take a back seat in staying vigilant for threats.
