The Risks of Bio-IoT
Credit to Author: William “Bill” Malik (CISA VP Infrastructure Strategies)| Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 13:00:34 +0000
Trend Micro has been protecting its customers now for almost 30 years. Over that time our mission has not changed. We still fight every day to make the world a safer place to exchange digital information. However, our messaging has needed to evolve to take account of the ever-changing threat landscape, as well as the evolution in user behavior and customers’ IT infrastructure.
That’s why beginning in 2018 we’re using a new tagline: Securing Your Connected World. We think it better reflects the age we live in now. But don’t worry, our ability to keep customers safe online will remain undiminished.
From a cloud journey to a connected world
We’ve come a long way from the very first days of Trend Micro, when we promoted ourselves as offering “Peace of Mind Computing.” Even 20 years back, the message seems strangely quaint: “Your Internet VirusWall.” Our taglines broadly echo a simple equation: x = i + u – t, in which:
• i = anticipate shifts in infrastructure
• u = embrace changes in user behavior
• t = protect against the full range of threats
Using that formula, it was accurate until recently to appeal to organizations with the message: Securing Your Journey to the Cloud. Why? Because cloud computing was a fast-emerging, but still relatively poorly secured and understood technology shift. We were aware that more and more organizations wanted to embrace IaaS, PaaS and SaaS to accelerate business growth and IT agility. But equally we knew that no two customers are the same and many would be at different stages of a journey towards cloud adoption.
In that world, aside from this major shift in the way organizations ran their IT infrastructure, there were major changes in user behavior — towards BYOD, social channels and cloud apps — while online threats became increasingly sophisticated and targeted. Recognizing there are no silver bullets for an increasingly broad and voluminous range of cyber-threats, we developed our XGen
approach to security: a cross-generational blend of techniques, optimized so the right tool is used at the right time to combat the right threat.
A new era
The threat landscape never stops advancing, and so we must revisit our message again.
So, what’s changing out there? Using that formula again, we see that the “i” of infrastructure is continues to evolve. The cloud is still relevant, but it’s maturing and in many cases evolving into a complex blend of hybrid and multi-cloud environments. On top of this, mobility has evolved to the point where we’re ready for 5G networks and all the performance benefits they will bring. Then there’s the elephant in the room: the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT. With Gartner forecasting more than 20 billion connected things by 2020, the impact on organizations and consumers alike is already massive. But as firms embrace IoT to improve productivity, efficiency and customer engagement, they’ll also expose themselves to unprecedented risk created by countless new unsecured but connected endpoints.
Users of course are flocking to mobile, cloud and IoT to make their lives easier, safer, happier, and more entertaining at work and at home. But on the other side, organizations are being squeezed harder than ever before – both from a regulatory compliance perspective (GDPR) and in terms of security skills. The global shortfall of 1.8 million predicted by 2022 will certainly require organizations to do more with less in the near future.
Against this backdrop lies the new reality of the threat landscape: ransomware, cyber propaganda, IoT hijacking, and cryptojacking, plus all the threats we’ve seen in years past, including APTs, banking Trojans, and more. Trend Micro blocked more than 66.4 billion cyber-threats in 2017 alone, more than 631m of which were ransomware-related and 85 percent of which were distributed via email.
The bottom line: As our world becomes more connected it is exposed and vulnerable to increasing threats from cyberspace. That’s why we’ll continue to deliver industry leading protection for our customers via XGen, which is:
Smart: Continually evolving and including a blend of techniques, such as artificial intelligence and behavioral analysis.
Optimized: Purpose-built for existing and new environments at a user, network, and datacenter/cloud level.
Connected: Our solutions are increasingly linked together for faster time to detection, protection, and response.
The times may be changing, but Trend Micro will always be here to help in Securing Your Connected World.
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