Enterprises today face an ever-evolving threat landscape with security breaches occurring at a fast pace. It’s becoming clear that enterprises must be able to not only identify and protect against known threats but also to protect against new and unknown malicious threats.

Jack Walsh, new initiatives & mobility programs manager at ICSA Labs discusses the latest rounds of Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) certification testing, and the security products being created to help protect end users against previously unknown threats.

Every day, there are articles in the news about Ransomware, but I’ll bet you don’t know just how prevalent this infectious menace has become.

At ICSA Labs, we’ve seen a tremendous spike in ransomware during the 2^nd quarter of 2016.

Knowing the benefits of certification is important for security product vendors and enterprises to understand.

The first step is to understand what certification is and what it is not.

As threats change, security product vendors hurry to keep pace.  Enterprises wonder whether commercial advanced threat defense (ATD) solutions will be able to keep up with the ever-evolving threatscape.

Samples Sources

A number of malicious sample sources feed into ICSA Labs’ Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) testing.

One source is the spam ICSA Labs collects. ICSA Labs collects hundreds of thousands of spam messages every day through its spam honeypots. Specific attention is paid to spam with attachments.  If the attachments are malicious, they are sample source candidates for ATD testing.

ICSA Labs Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) certification testing is aimed at vendor solutions designed to detect threats that other traditional security products miss.  The testing is focused on how effectively vendor ATD solutions work against unknown and little-known threats.

In addition to detection effectiveness, ICSA Labs tests whether or not ATD solutions alert on innocuous applications and associated activity. The timeliness of detection and logging of malicious threats are also tested.

Introduction

This blog entry is the first in a four-part series marking the launch of ICSA Labs’ newest certification testing program for Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) solutions.  Be sure to check back on the ICSA Labs Security Testing Blog each Monday through December for an update.

Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) Solutions – Why Enterprises Need Them

The number of Internet-connected devices on the planet is projected to reach 25 billion by 2020, according to a 2014 report by Gartner. This goes beyond mobile phones to include household appliances, medical devices, automobiles, accessories and more.  

The connectivity and mobility the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies enable will fundamentally change the way consumers and businesses operate. While the benefits of mobility are clear, adding Internet connectivity to everyday devices introduces an unprecedented layer of complexity and risk.

Earlier this month, I stopped in to my optometrist’s office for a routine appointment. The office is small, situated in a building that’s a bit removed from the main road. As with many of my previous eye appointments, I sat down with the person at the counter so she could pull up my prescription information on the computer and review my insurance benefits for the final pricing.  Apparently a password was required to access this information, which the woman behind the counter helping me didn’t have.

I recently read some of the articles about bug bounties and their relative virtues. Some of the comments were thought provoking, controversial and entertaining as they are a departure from comments that are trying to make a marketing statement rather than an avenue for expressing their true feelings on the subject.