On zero-day attacks and phishing

Miscreants, who look to steal important personal data like passwords and bank account details, heavily bank on human gullibility. They know they need to be lucky only once, keeping us on the toes all the time.

According to Chris Young, CEO, McAfee, phishing continues to be the number one vehicle for attacks. Hackers cleverly include links laden with malware in messages and emails that often have references to recent headline-grabbing events and issues, tempting unsuspecting online users to click on them.

In an interview at Bengaluru’s McAfee’s offices, Young said the biggest change in the threat landscape today is the combination of the attack types. The targeting and the way attackers go after their targets are changing constantly. He said zero-day attacks, which by definition are threats that haven’t been encountered previously, have now gone from being the exception to the norm. “That is because the attackers are smart. Now, when an attack is launched, it is with a completely new set of IP addresses, with a new variant of the malware, etcetera, in their effort to avoid detection.”

In fact, things might not look any better in the immediate future. In the coming year, McAfee is expecting a consolidation of underground networks, comprising hidden hacker forums and chat groups, thereby creating fewer but stronger malware-as-a-service families. There could be more rapid exploitation of new vulnerabilities and an increase in the number of mobile malware. The company foresees an increased use of the remote desktop protocol for hackers to gain access.

Often, attackers succeed not because there are no solutions to thwart the attempts at hacking. It’s because users have been lazy or negligent, and have disregarded important anti-virus updates, or they don’t have the right security controls in the right places.

Cloud onboarding

Considering that many organisations are moving towards cloud computing, McAfee is investing heavily in that area. For example, just over a year ago, it acquired a company called Skyhigh Networks, who are specialised in this segment. McAfee also has the MVISION solution that helps customers as they move to the cloud.

Christopher Young, CEO, McAfee, Bengaluru Campus on February 12, 2018.

Young said a unique feature of their solutions is that they are primarily driven by APIs. “We really integrate with the native Application Programming Interface (API) sets available from the cloud provider themselves, so we don’t provide a barrier between the user and the app. We integrate directly with the application. We can operate all our DLP (data loss prevention) tools as part of an integrated set of tools in the backend. So the owner organisation sets the policy and we enforce that policy again through an API model which is more cloud native and much more user-friendly for providing the right level of security.”

Of Artificial Intelligence

A lot of advanced technology is built into cyber-protection, and the architecture of the solution makes it easier for the customer to stay safe. “While there are some components that run in the products themselves, there is a lot of intelligence and analytics that we drive in our cloud backend, so that we can give our customers much more real-time capability, and that is in direct response to the way the attackers work today,” he comments. “For several years now, we have various forms of machine learning, deep learning methodology, built into our products. In fact, it was a team out of Bengaluru, that built the first set of ML modules that we ship as part of our suite.”

New solution for gamers

For gaming fans, who often shut down many applications, including security solutions, in order to save on resources, the company announced at the recent CES 2019, ‘McAfee Gamer Security’, which enhances the in-game performance while keeping the gamers safe.

The product automatically boosts and optimises resources like CPU, GPU, RAM and provides gamers consumption trends from previous gaming sessions, so that they can further optimise their systems for the best possible gaming experience.

So think twice and listen to the CEOs when necessary — whether you use McAfee or otherwise.