McAfee: 4 New Cyberthreats Per Second, Many Of Them Mobile Malware

Dive Summary:

    Mobile malware grew nearly 80 percent in the last four quarters to 16.7 million samples, according to a new McAfee report. There are currently 670 samples of malware collected in the last four quarters, both mobile and otherwise.
    Mobile malware, in particular, has seen a rebound in Asia, doubling in the first quarter and increasing 57 percent in global infection rates, McAfee said. Most of that growth is due to the increase in Android / SMSreg.
    Through the global threat network, McAfee found 301 security incidents in Q1 that were publicly disclosed. In the first quarter, 244 new threats appeared every minute, or more than four per second.

Dive Insight:

Cybercriminals continue to refine their skills and look for ways to overcome typical corporate protections, and show no signs of slowing down over the years. For example, malicious steganography, the practice of hiding messages in images, audio tracks, video clips or text files to avoid detection by security systems, hides a secret message within what appears to be a legitimate message.

That kind of trick of the hand can fool even the most security conscious and potentially infect dozens of devices.

As companies employ a more mobile workforce, cybercriminals are taking note. Because malware, ransomware and other types of attacks can be financially rewarding, cybercriminals will continue to devise ways to trick employees into downloading malicious files to their mobile devices or revealing confidential corporate data that can give criminals a path Towards the corporate network.

The best protection, as always, is to educate employees - mobile or otherwise - how to detect and avoid such pitfalls. And a robust mobile device management system certainly will not hurt.