Kaspersky Lab Raises Cyber Security Issues at Budapest Conference

On November 19-22, Kaspersky Lab hosted the Cyber Security Weekend for Europe in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss current IT security trends, talk about the forecast for 2016 and give advice on how businesses can stay secure from cyber threats. Journalists and business representatives from 12 countries listened to presentations by experts from Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research & Analysis Team (GReAT) and a special guest from Europol.

“Cooperation between law enforcement organizations, private industry and academia is essential to effectively combat cybercrime. Together we work on identifying and eliminating malicious infrastructures, sink-holing, help disinfecting victims,” said Gary McEwen, Strategic Analyst, European Cyber Crime Centre (EC3), Europol.

In his presentation, Gary McEwen spoke about cybercrime trends, including the lowering of the entry barrier to cybercrime, the increasing aggressiveness of cybercrime through the spread of ransomware (especially ‘police’ ransomware and cryptoware) and extension of Remote Access Tools use in IT attacks.

“Nowadays cybersecurity is not an issue that just IT people take into consideration, it concerns everyone – home users and their families, small businesses and large organizations. Sharing information and building a security mindset is very important and that is what we try to do with such events. We also often stress the need to secure business processes, whether they mean the work of an accountant at a small company, or the functioning of a water supply system of an entire city. From ransomware to a targeted attack, cybersecurity risks should be handled with the right solutions, policies and employee education,” saidStefan Tanase, Senior Security Researcher, Global Research & Analysis Team, Kaspersky Lab.

Expert analysis of IT threats in the third quarter of 2015 indicates that in Europe an average of 35% of users encountered security incidents related to local networks and removable media, while web-related threats were detected on the computers of 20%. Speaking about the threats encountered by organizations, the experts referred to statistics from the 2015 Global Corporate IT Security Risks survey conducted by B2B International and Kaspersky Lab. 48% of businesses in Europe said they faced viruses, worms, spyware and other malicious programs in the last 12 months, 18% said network intrusions had been detected, 12% encountered cyberespionage and 8% were subjected to a targeted attack.

The same survey showed that in terms of internal threats, organizations encountered vulnerabilities in software they were using (29% of respondents) and information leaked by staff – accidentally (21%) and intentionally (11%). Mobile devices with corporate information stored on them present an additional risk of data leakage. The experts at the conference discussed these threats and the solutions that can address them. With the volume of data stored in data centers growing, security of virtualized servers and data storage systems were also discussed. The benefits of a holistic approach to cyber security – one that unites IT technologies, processes and education – were also stressed.

According to Gartner, a typical company invests 90% of its IT security budget in prevention and only 10% in detection/response. But even with these percentages Intelligent Services are being requested more and more by organizations. Such services can make organizations of different sizes and industries more secure. Kaspersky Lab has gathered lots of intelligence about cyberthreats in its day-to-day work over the last 18 years, and the company has been transforming this leading expertise into real protection for all its clients.