Next Generation Threat Prevention

Whether tangible or intangible, the costs of data breaches continue to rise, as do targeted and intentional attacks. The Ponemon Institute's Fifth Annual US Cost of Data Breach study confirms this, revealing that data breaches as a result of malicious activities doubled in 2009 from the previous year. The increase in malicious attacks coincides with the development of more sophisticated next-generation threats.

The analyst & research firm, The 451 group, indicates that the threat paradigm has shifted to quiet, stealthy and sophisticated attacks backed by determined and well-financed adversaries. ("E-Crime and Advanced Persistent Threats: How Profit And Politics Affect IT Security Strategies" by The 451 Group: Enterprise Security Practice, March 2010). The 451 Group report indicates that organized crime and more advanced persistent threats pose a much greater threat to both businesses and national security than ever before.

While advanced, persistent threats (APT) are getting a lot of attention lately, the threat landscape is much broader and deep. Next generation threats come in various flavors but are generally:

• Beyond current defenses (zero-day)
• Persistent (time dimension)
• Port agnostic and evasive
• Multi-stage, Multi-vector
• Multi-identity morphing and encoding
• Comprised of complex motives and objectives

The danger that next generation threats pose is so serious that The 451 Group indicates that unless organizations make wholesale changes to the way they manage their security, major breaches costing organizations hundreds of millions of dollars will become more common in the future.

To combat and prevent the damaging effects of these threats, today's organizations–large and small–need complete network visibility, swift incident response, and the ability to both protect and deter. Solera Networks provides the network forensics platform that delivers the protection you need.