According to a recent Symantec blog, attackers are targeting SMBs at a greater rate than larger companies of more than 500 people.

Hudson, NH (USA), Monday – October 03, 201 — According to a recent Symantec blog, attackers are targeting SMBs at a greater rate than larger companies of more than 500 people. Some other interesting facts from Symantec’s cloud research:

“The percentage of employees who received a targeted Trojan during 2010 was much higher for the SMB sector than for large companies. One small business, in particular, had targeted Trojans sent to all 488 of their employees. SMB industry sectors such as mineral/fuel, non-profit, engineering, marketing and recreation received the most attacks compared with other industry sectors, showing that they are at higher risk. They also found that attackers target intellectual property and market-leading research – focusing their efforts on education and market research organizations, in particular.”

Commtouch, a provider of antivirus technology to industry, is indicating in its blog that targeted emails with malicious attachments have increased dramatically since August to two billion or more per day. These are not emails with links to bogus or malicious websites, but attachments that may look like normal document files typical in business. These attacks are not spam but something far more sinister.

These targeted attacks are aimed at specific individuals in specific organizations, contain embedded malware, and are designed largely to capture credentials and gain access to valuable data. Much of this targeted email with malicious attachments bypasses antivirus and gateway protections. It lands squarely in a target’s inbox as legitimate email. The embedded malware is designed to be unique and unknown to anti-virus and anti-malware.

If you find yourself reading an email with an attachment that seems to be legitimate, think twice, it may not be. A targeted email attack often uses information about you to gain your trust. It will seem like a normal email.

So what do you do? Symantec’s blogger suggests that you “use common sense” and “be smart.” Your business associates send you data files that you open all of the time. The attacker will pose as one of them, but will bury a program inside. You can’t possibly know for sure, regardless of how much common sense you apply.

The new SavantEnforcer client will block malicious attachments automatically because it denies by default any unknown executable. It’s a simple and powerful antidote for the avalanche of targeted malware and it can be installed on a computer for about a dollar per month. Should you use common sense, good security practices and keep your software protection up to date? Of course you should. But you may also want to consider a solution that gives you the confidence to open an attachment without the risk of compromise.

About Savant Protection:
Savant Protection is a leading privately held vendor of innovative application whitelisting solutions that fill major gaps in the functionality of other endpoint security and management products and provide significant operational and financial benefits to customers. The company’s solutions are easy to integrate with existing systems, are not dependent on a central whitelist database, and can stop zero-day attacks and address the increasing inability of existing endpoint solutions, such as signature-based anti-virus products, to effectively protect against the growing proliferation of sophisticated, targeted malware.Savant Protection’s customers are able to lower costs and increase their organization’s productivity by minimizing endpoint incidents that require remediation and cause unproductive downtime for users. Savant Protection is headquartered in Hudson, New Hampshire, USA. http://www.SavantProtection.com

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