Intelligent CISO Issue 23 | Page 18

cyber trends PROOFPOINT HAS GATHERED ITS TOP PREDICTIONS FOR INDUSTRY EXPERTS TO WATCH OUT FOR THIS YEAR. EMILE ABOU SALEH, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA AT PROOFPOINT, TELLS US DOWNLOADERS AND BOTNETS ABOUND WHILE SUPPLY CHAINS AND ACCOUNT COMPROMISES WILL DRIVE PHISHING. D uring 2019, there were many trends within the threat landscape that help paint a picture of what we can expect to unravel this year. These include the results of widespread RAT and downloader distribution, significant evolution in impostor attacks and increasingly sophisticated attacks on cloud applications. Notably, email will remain the initial threat vector of choice for most actors, driving credential phishing campaigns; targeted attacks with malware to establish a beachhead within organisations; and for widespread distribution of banking Trojans, downloaders, backdoors and more. However, cloud-based email systems like Microsoft Office 365 and GSuite will 18 Proofpoint’s security predictions in the Middle East themselves also be key targets for threat actors, providing platforms for future attacks and lateral movement within targeted organisations. with this, Proofpoint gathered the below top predictions for CIOs to watch out for: As cybercriminals are increasingly shifting their focus from targeting infrastructure to targeting people, in 2020 it is vital that organisations in the Middle East, as well as across the globe, recognise the human factor threat as any organisation, regardless of its geography, is a target of those threat actors. Aligned Despite its near absence as a primary payload in malicious emails, ransomware continued to make headlines throughout 2019, largely in so-called ‘big game hunting attacks.’ Ransomware We expect these types of attacks – in which threat actors focus on Issue 23 | www.intelligentciso.com