Does your security strategy adequately address how to deal with advanced persistent threats (APTs)? Probably not—unless you have diligently kept up with threat trends and new security technologies over the past few years. Thanks to mobile and cloud computing, the traditional defense line at the perimeter is gone, and serious attackers are exploiting new weaknesses that didn’t exist just a few years ago.
I recently spoke with Michael Sutton, vice president of security research for Zscaler, to get his views on dealing with APTs. His company is a security cloud provider that scrutinizes more than 12 billion transactions a day for thousands of enterprises worldwide. That level of activity gives Zscaler some good insight on threat trends and the changing security landscape.
My conversation with Sutton started with his definition of “advanced persistent threat.” According to Sutton, an APT is a very specific kind of attack. “The ‘advanced’ part means the attacker has a full toolkit at his disposal. It’s not just zero-day code. He is going to use known threats and unknown threats, and he will leverage social engineering. He’ll do whatever it takes to get inside a targeted organization,” Sutton says.
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