Takeaways and Best Practices from Cisco’s Midyear Security Report

Takeaways from the report:

The growth of Malvertising adds which hackers use to attack straight from the website, without need of clicking on the malicious advertisement. Media and publishing companies are being targeted, with Malvertising ads placed on their websites that infect their customers.
Every multinational company included in the report has activity on their sites that they don’t want happening. There are indications of traffic that shouldn’t be there, and machines that have been touched by outside sources, likely hackers.
Pharmaceutical, petrochemical, food and beverage, and aviation industries are being hit the hardest right now.
All of the traditional practices that security officers have had for decades, such as firewalls, don’t translate well into the new generations of issues
The hacking community hasn’t gone away, there are increases in activity, and they are focusing on high, profitable criminality and destruction.
The single biggest way that machines are being affected is through a lack of updated software. This is more concerning as many devices, from TVs to refrigerators, carry their own IP and software.

How to protect yourself:

Keep software updated!
Somebody has to look out for you besides you. You need an outside observer looking out for your security, because there are blind spots that you won’t see internally. Subscribe or partner with others to keep an eye on security.
The arrest of Paunch, the author of the BlackHole Exploit Kit, has sent ripples through the hacking community. However, this means security officers must keep an eye out for the inevitably competitive exploit kits that will now be developed in Paunch’s wake.
Find your vulnerabilities, and when you do, fix them. Just knowing isn’t enough, and as long as you are vulnerable hackers will exploit you.
In security, you are either preventing something, handling something, or cleaning up. This is the way you should think about it.
Security is being treated as an IT problem, and not as a part of the business practice. We need the criticality of security to move to the boardroom. Once it becomes a business process, it will be handled the way it needs to be.

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