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Bad actors never rest

Creating legitimate-looking fake communications from Google or Microsoft is easy and inexpensive. Novice attackers with little or no coding experience can purchase phishing packs on the dark web that they can customize and then send emails to specific targets based on social engineering intelligence. Free and compromised accounts can also be used as an attack vector , hosting documents that contain malware or links to fake web forms or other malicious sites.

Introducing cloud-based data loss prevention with Menlo Security

Sensitive data leaving a company via the web is a major concern for many networks. Bad actors perpetrate 69 percent of external data breach attacks and represent the largest threat to organizations that are not using cloud isolation. For our customers, however, we prevent these attacks.

Because external actors frequently rely on phishing and malware insertion, Menlo Security customers are largely protected through our browser and email isolation. The remaining threat vector then moves to the company’s own employees.

How exciting! Today we moved into the second floor of 800 W. El Camino in Mountain View! We’re excited to announce that, because of remarkable growth over the last seven years, Menlo Security is expanding. This is a reflection of what we’re doing and have been doing—relentlessly on eradicating malware from Web and Email.

Today we announced security without compromise. Menlo Security is offering a warranty of up to $1 million to any customer that experiences an infection from malware that passes through our Isolation Core™. This warranty is the first of its kind from a cloud proxy company, a category that includes some very large, public companies who have thousands of customers. 

The Emotet malware is a very destructive banking Trojan that was first identified in 2014. Over the years it has evolved with new capabilities and functionalities, prompting cybersecurity agencies like the Australian Cyber Security Centre and US-CERT to issue advisories. Emotet malware generally spreads via malicious documents that drop a modular Trojan bot, which is used to download and install additional remote access tools. We wrote a blog post in January 2019 about how the malware had changed tactics, leading to a spike in the number of Emotet malware attacks. In the last week, we have observed a spike in the number of Emotet malware transactions across our customer base. US-CERT has also issued a fresh advisory regarding the recent spate of attacks. 

Not all vulnerabilities are created equal. It’s true. In a perfect world, organizations should be able to patch every vulnerability on every client immediately. But we don’t live in a perfect world. Some vulnerabilities pose a much greater risk to the organization than others and should be prioritized.

As warfare extends to cyberspace, U.S.-based organizations can use email and web isolation to protect users from common tactics used by Iranian-backed threat actors.

In October 2018, Gartner released a report on remote browser isolation. It ruffled feathers a bit throughout the cybersecurity industry by suggesting that enterprises can no longer assume that their traditional detect-and-respond security strategy was enough to stop all web-based malware attacks. Analyst Neil MacDonald argued that enterprises should stop trying to detect every attack and instead focus on “containing the ability of the attacker to cause damage and reduce the surface area for attack.”

According to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, “The threat of cyber security may very well be the biggest threat to the US financial system.” Coupled with the fact that financial services is one of the most highly targeted industries, it’s clear financial organizations are in trouble.  Reports show a 56% year-over-year increase in digital threats targeting the sector, and according to new research, phishing is a key threat vector.

From a bad actor perspective, phishing is the cheapest and easiest way to infiltrate organizations and personal information
to make a profit. By nature, humans are curious and are oft en overconfident when it comes to security. Phishing is an even greater threat for mobile users, too. Without key visual cues, like the ability to hover over a link to determine its destination, it is much easier for a user to make the simple mistake of clicking a bad link and falling victim to a phishing attempt. The popularity of social media has also made it much easier for hackers to find valid email addresses and research users’
life activities to create sophisticated, tailored phishing attacks.  From a security perspective, there are typically three approaches to solving the phishing problem – email security gateways, web proxies and security training awareness – but each has its own limitations.