Bill Conner: How the UK Is Taking Malware Seriously
Bill Conner sat down with Information Age editor Nick Ismail to discuss global malware attack statistics, cross-border cybersecurity collaboration, the increasing need to inspect PDFs and Microsoft Office documents, and how all impact the dynamic U.K. political landscape.
Though malware attack data shows an increase in global attacks, the U.K. has experienced a decrease in these attacks following the WannaCry ransomware strain in previous years.
Conner sees this as a positive change for the U.K. and stated via Information Age, “you guys were all over it” following the WannaCry attack and “most of the vendors in the U.K. and their customers put solutions in place to protect against multiple family variants of ransomware.”
While this is a positive change for the U.K., there is still work to be done globally and Conner says regardless of the often divided political climate, “there’s a good foundation for cyber collaboration across borders.”
“Right now, we need to focus on those PDFs and Office (files), the things you run in your business every day, because they can be exploited for IP and monetary gain. And you can’t even see it.”
Bill Conner
SonicWall President & CEO
In addition to urging governments to look toward political collaboration to tighten cybersecurity globally, Conner explained the majority of this change will come through the dedication of law enforcement.
“Law enforcement sharing is better than political sharing at the moment,” Conner told Information Age. “Public institutions, private organizations and different governments have got to collaborate. But, above all, we’ve got to have dedicated cyber law enforcement.”
While a global cybersecurity strategy may be down the road, Conner says there are places to focus on now to best secure governments, enterprises and SMBs.
What does Conner recommend an organization focus their cybersecurity strategy on?
“What I’m telling governments and enterprises is to forget side-channel exploits for the moment,” he said. “Right now, we need to focus on those PDFs and Office (files), the things you run in your business every day.”
One of the ways to mitigate these specific malware threats requires advanced technology, like SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with SonicWall Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI™), to inspect and mitigate attacks in memory.
Read the rest of Conner’s recommendations and predictions in his interview with Information Age.
Webcast: SonicWall RTDMI™ vs. Side-Channel Cyberattacks
SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner hosts CTO John Gmuender as they walk you through how SonicWall Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMITM) stops malicious executables, PDFs and Microsoft Office documents — all in real time.
