Malware attacks on small-to midsized (SMB) businesses in the US jumped 165% in the first quarter over the same period last year, according to a new Malwarebytes study. Michael Patterson, CEO of Plixer commented below.
Michael Patterson, CEO at Plixer:
“All companies and organizations are hit by infection attempts every day. Preventative measures, like firewall rules and patched operating systems do a decent job at protecting companies from a wide array of known threats. However, most targeted zero day attacks cannot be stopped by machines. Human intervention remains the last defense against the spread of malware. Once the contagion is inside, the most effective corporate defense is network traffic intelligence and behavior monitoring. The nature of viruses today is to remain stealthy and to move around in a low and slow pattern. Monitoring systems need to detect subtle changes in traffic patterns and behaviors. These changes should trigger alerts as well as associate these events with a per-device score. The process of maintaining a score that dynamically changes based on system behaviors is the intelligent way to ensure that out-of-the-ordinary behaviors that are the byproduct of zero-day attacks get the attention of the incident response team.”
