Malware is getting sneakier with a majority of it (91.5%) arriving over encrypted HTTPS connections in Q2 2021, according to new report research.
The latest quarterly report from cybersecurity firm WatchGuard, based on anonymised data collected from its firewall appliances, found that although there’s been a slight dip in the number of malware attacks, an increasing number of threat actors have trained their focus on remote users working from home.
Pointing out the alarming change in the delivery mechanism of malware, the report argues that any organization that isn’t examining encrypted HTTPS traffic at the perimeter is missing 9/10 of all malware.
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“With much of the world still firmly operating in a mobile or hybrid workforce model, the traditional network perimeter doesn’t always factor into the cybersecurity defence equation,” said Corey Nachreiner, chief security officer at WatchGuard.
Harder to detect
In Q2 2021, WatchGuard says it blocked a total of more than 16.6 million malware variants (438 per device) and nearly 5.2 million network threats (137 per device).
Also, while zero-day malware that evades signature-based protections registered a drop of almost 10% in the quarter, they still account for two-thirds of all malware.
Sifting through the data, the researchers also found an alarming surge of fileless malware, as well as a dramatic growth in ransomware.
“In the first half of 2021, our ransomware detections have fallen just short of 2020’s full year detections. If this trend continues without additional growth, the 2021 ransomware total will reach at least 150 percent of last year,” warn the researchers.
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