One thing that many people are really unaware of these days is the lack of network security. They feel that their Internet Security Suites (Norton, McCrapee, Kaspersky, Webroot, Emsisoft, Avast, etc. etc.) keeps them safe from would be malicious people. In fact, that is clearly not the case. Unfortunately, due to the fact that certain governments (won't mention them) encouraged certain companies to weaken security, our devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops/desktops, etc.) are extremely prone to attacks these days. Here are a few examples of cyber attacks.


Advanced persistent threats

Even if systems have antivirus software, they are not immune to advanced persistent threats (APT) — attacks in which malware maliciously employ programs so they can pass undetected. When this happens, businesses suffer immensely as APT causes enormous damage on the network.

A common example of APT is when malware is disguised as routine business communications, such as sending or receiving emails, but the most common type of malware today is known as a Remote Access Trojan (RAT), Clementelli said.

"With a RAT, the intruder outside a network remotely operates an infected PC within a network to collect internal data," he said. RAT infiltrates the network in advance through an email message, for instance, but does not immediately begin the attack. "Afterwards, when the attack begins, the content of the communications does not contain malware itself, and the traffic associated with the remote operations is almost always encrypted. This activity is difficult to discover using conventional antivirus software or unauthorized intrusion-detection systems."

Unknown malware

In addition to undetected malware, there are also unknown malware bypassing antivirus solutions. The sheer amount of malware being created and distributed daily makes it virtually impossible for antivirus to protect against them all.

"We're literally being bombarded by new malware to the tune of 200,000 new malware each and every single day, and that's on a good day," said Pierluigi Stella, chief technology officer at managed security services firm Network Box USA. "During an outbreak, we see that number escalate, sometimes close to 1 million."

This is because it's easier than ever for hackers to launch attacks. Not only can they create viruses automatically — with thousands and thousands of variations hourly — but they have also built an efficient and rapid distribution network, Stella said. In comparison, it can take an antivirus company several hours to detect and fix malware.

To combat this, antivirus companies are finding new ways to protect systems, such as relying on cloud-based databases of malware signatures — an algorithm that specifically identifies individual viruses — and methods that detect malware that don't have signatures.

For businesses, this means finding antivirus software or providers that have "zero- day" initiatives, which refers to malware that no one has seen before and has no protection available against it.

"Catching the zero-day malware is where the industry's headed," Stella said. "Sandboxing, behavioral analysis, pattern recognition, etc. are all expressions describing some of the methods companies are using to spot the next 'zero day' before it causes damage. Many such methods are plagued with false positives, but a false positive is far more acceptable than a false negative [where unknown malware] then enters your network and causes havoc."

Source: Myself and http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6634-antivirus-software-protection.html


There are many ways people can attack you sadly, Security suites and Firewalls sadly don't defend against everything.