“Targeted Attacks: Personal or Corporate” asks David Emm at MENA Information Security Conference 2012

Hundreds of major businesses have been hit by targeted marlware attacks, said David Emm, Senior Regional Researcher, UK, Global Research & Analysis Team of Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management solutions, on day one of the MENA Information Security Conference 2012. The event is being held on the 18^th and 19^th of April at the Kempinski Hotel in Amman, Dead Sea, Jordan for the second year, gathering industry experts and leading vendors to discuss the challenges for the future of cyber security.

According to Kaspersky Lab’s survey on “Global IT Security Risks”, a significant number of businesses have become victims to cyber crime, including targeted attacks, events of corporate espionage and loss of sensitive intellectual property naming including RSA, HBGary, Google’s Gmail, and Lockheed Martin. This in turn verifies that cyber threats have become much more important for business, which was confirmed by 46% of the organizations.

59% of companies report to be at least well-equipped against cyber threats. However, small businesses indicate a lower level of confidence. Almost half of the organizations have experienced an increase in the number of cyber attacks against them in the last 12 months. Businesses are worried that cyber-attacks may involve organized criminal gangs and are concerned about government interference. As a result, prevention of IT security breaches was the number 1 concern in all regions among IT staff.

Commenting on IT security for corporations, David Emm said, “IT strategy is one of the main concerns for businesses, ranked higher even than financial, marketing and human resources strategy. Almost half of all organizations see cyber-threats as one of the top-three developing risks. Wider business threats may also be a result of an IT security breach. 30% of the companies’ feel that are being specifically targeted by cyber-attacks and 9% of companies admit to at least one IT security issue involving a targeted attack.” He continued, “The only reason this is not even higher is that most targeted attacks are designed to be discrete, so companies never even notice them”.

Moreover, David shared the security tips with the audience

Do not open attachments in strange e-mails, especially in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF formats.

Use a secure browser to access the Internet like Google Chrome, due to its exceptional sandboxing technology.

Update all third-party applications; MS Office, Adobe Reader and Flash Player are among the third-party applications most frequently targeted by cybercriminals.

Keep your OS up-to-date; enable automatic updates in windows and the respective auto-updates [e.g. Yumd] in Linux

Commenting on Kaspersky Lab’s participation in this summit, Tarek Kuzbari, Managing Director, Kaspersky Lab, Middle East and Turkey said, “This is our first participation in MENA Information Security Conference and we are delighted to be part of such an important event in the region. Strong IT security across all business departments covering all endpoints is necessary to avoid major damage to a company. The number of cyber-threats, including targeted attacks, may lead not only to sensitive data loss a company’s brand image can also be damaged, which is a top threat for the majority of businesses”.