The Asia Pacific (APAC) region is frequently attacked by various advanced persistent threats (APTs), with Philippines as the most exposed ASEAN country to these activities, registering significant peaks in the first half of the year, according to the Advanced Threat Report for the APAC released by FireEye, a security platform provider.
The report, which provides a look into cyber attacks that routinely bypass traditional defenses such as firewalls, next-generation firewalls, IPS, antivirus, and security gateways, found out that the services/consulting/VAR industry was the most targeted by APT attacks last year at 19.8%. It was followed by the government sector, 13.5%; high-tech industry, 13%; entertainment/media/hospitality sector, 10.2%; and telecom, 9.2%.
Tom Acero, Country Manager of FireEye Philippines, said that it took companies an average of 229 days to discover they were under attack, while malware lingered in a company for almost a year before it was detected. Acero added that most of the companies or 67% found out they were breached through a third party.
Among ASEAN nations, the Philippines ranked highest on the list of APT activity, having more advanced threat activity than Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. Actively attacking in the Philippines were malware families Hussarini and Page.
Combating these advanced threats requires a real-time, proactive approach to security that can assist enterprises to respond immediately to any type of attacks. Through FireEye security solutions, security-conscious enterprises can avail of comprehensive protection against these threats.
According to Vivek Chudgar, Mandiant’s Managing Director, Security Consulting Services, Asia Pacific & Japan, the capabilities of their solutions are not limited to large enterprises only.
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They also have solutions that cater to the requirements of small and medium-sized businesses. The FireEye Threat Prevention Platform, a virtual machine-based security platform, provides real time, dynamic threat protection without the use of signatures to protect an organization across the primary threat vectors and across the different stages of an attack life cycle.
Through FireEye solutions, brands, intellectual property and data are secured against advanced cyber attacks.
The platform is formed by Multi-Vector Execution (MVX) engine which is a signature-less virtualized detection engine and Dynamic Threat Intelligence (DTI) for multi-vector threat intelligence correlation and partner interoperability to identify and block cyber attacks in real time.
The MVX engine, which can be deployed across attack vendors, detonates suspicious files, Web pages and email attachments within a virtual machine to confirm a cyber attack. When an attack has been confirmed, the MVX engine generates threat intelligence about the attack and the targeted enterprise.
Engaged in detecting, protecting and responding to the new generation of cyber attacks such as advanced malware, the US-based FireEye has more than 2,500 customers across more than 60 countries, including over 130 of the Fortune 500. In APAC, the company is headquartered in Singapore and has presence across 15 markets in the region.
