Proactive security framework required to safeguard a sophisticated attack

In a chat with VARINDIA, Michael Joseph, Director - System Engineering, Fortinet discusses about the trends in the threat landscape, how cybercriminals are upping their game with the latest technologies like AI and ML, RBI guidelines for banks and cryptocurrency 

As per the Global Threat Landscape Report released by Fortinet, threats are increasing and evolving to become more sophisticated. Unique threat variants and families are on the rise. The report also upholds that organizations are adopting new technologies and strategies such as machine learning and automation to take on tedious and time-consuming activities that normally require a high degree of human supervision and intervention. These newer defensive strategies are impacting cybercriminal strategies and forcing them to shift attack methods. The cybercriminals are also adopting these technologies to launch an attack. 

“Based on the Fortinet report on how sophisticated attack could become or the sophisticated tools the hackers could be using technologies like Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning etc., it is very important that customers look at a proactive security framework rather than reactive where the important pieces would be absolute visibility in terms of what is happening in your network, the kind of traffic, applications, to give alerts in any kind of abnormality happening at the application, endpoint, network level etc. and with security intelligence and security feeds what they need to collect as an end user from the third party agencies you would be better equipped from a proactive nature to counter that new threats which could be coming in,” elaborates Michael Joseph, Director - System Engineering, Fortinet. 

Difference in threat trends between Global and India:
In India, the trends that are seen in the security landscape are different from global trends. In India, mobile malware is one of the key trends whereas it is not in global threat landscape.      

“So, what we can see based on the reports, there are certain things from a threat vector, exploit, malware perspective which is unique to India compared to global trends like the android malware which was in top five in India perspective but it was not there in global trends. So what it indicates is the potential of more and more vulnerabilities being exploited or what is being currently exploited in India has a higher volume compared to the rest of the world where people needs to be careful about the applications used on mobiles etc.,” highlights Michael. 

He further adds, “When it comes to India compared to the rest of the globe, we have certain differences in terms of still using few legacy applications, we tend to use a lot of applications which is not validated, using applications which may not be legitimate in nature or without the valid licences because of which the updates from the vendors are not getting applied, the probability of a vulnerability being there coming with that software is high because of which certain exploits are seen higher in India.”  

Cyber threat and BFSI Industry:
Banking is the most targeted space these days when it comes to cyber threat. Keeping the recent attacks in mind, RBI has come up with stringent rules which every bank has to follow. Explaining the guidelines, Michael says, “From a banking industry perspective, post the attack which happened in Bangladesh where USD 80 million was taken away, RBI has issued much more stringent guidelines to the bank in terms of - one, every bank has been asked to set up a SOC. Second, the security framework or guidelines which was given and every bank had to follow in terms of deploying various security measures, products etc., and how the banks are progressing in terms of the guidelines, every week the senior management from the IT organization had to report back to RBI. So definitely, these are right initiatives taken to ensure that the banking sector in general, the end user’s money and infrastructure is protected. There is also a guideline which states that in case of a breach now there is a guideline which clearly mandates in terms of within what timeframe they have to report it back to various government agencies. These are measures which were not earlier there and have happened in past two years.”   

Cryptocurrency:
Talking about the popularity of cryptocurrency, Michael opines, “There had been some legislation in place when it comes to cryptocurrency and it was said that it cannot be used in various scenarios. I would say the hype which was created in terms of cryptocurrency valuation was sky rocketing few months back. The demand and popularity is coming down because there are various legislations which are working to ensure that this cryptocurrency is not used for anti-national or illegal kind of activities etc because in certain scenarios it was not very easy to track in terms of from where to where the exchange is happening etc.

From a cryptomining perspective, Fortinet had been able to protect customers who have deployed our solutions where we are able to give protection against that cryptomining where company’s official resources or the computing power is being misused for doing this cryptomining where customers will be able to prevent that from happening and also get the visibility in terms of happening in the network.”