Australia’s encrypted cyber attacks rise despite security efforts>
Security Brief AU – Shannon Williams
A recent report by Zscaler revealed that Australia ranks among the top five nations targeted by encrypted cyber attacks.
The research uncovered that 86% of threats, covering malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks, are delivered via encrypted channels.
Additionally, the APAC region observed a significant 290% increase in ad spyware site attacks.
Manufacturing emerged as the industry facing the most attacks for the second consecutive year, while the education and government sectors experienced the highest year-on-year escalation in attack instances.
Zscaler’s cloud recorded a 24% increase in threats over HTTPS, amounting to approximately 30 billion blocked threats.
Notably, encrypted malware and malicious content accounted for 78% of observed attacks.
Deepen Desai, Chief Security Officer at Zscaler, emphasized the current extent of cybercriminal exploitation in encrypted channels, particularly noting that nearly 95% of web traffic flows over HTTPS, and 86% of advanced threats are spread via encrypted channels, leading to significant blind spots.
He stressed the necessity of transitioning from vulnerable appliances to a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution, facilitating inline inspection of TLS traffic at scale to block threats and prevent data breaches.
The report highlighted concerns regarding the use of AI and ML in manufacturing and noted significant increases in encrypted attacks in the education and government sectors.
Zscaler recommended adopting comprehensive zero trust architectures with the ability to inspect all encrypted traffic and utilize AI/ML models to mitigate malicious traffic, thereby reducing business risk at each stage of a cyber attack.
Additionally, the report suggested deploying cloud-native, proxy-based architectures to decrypt, detect, and prevent threats in all encrypted traffic at scale.
By continuously inspecting all traffic, implementing AI-driven sandboxing techniques, evaluating the organization’s attack surface, and adopting a zero-trust architecture for holistic security, organizations can bolster their defenses against encrypted attacks.
Link: https://securitybrief.com.au/story/australia-s-encrypted-cyber-attacks-rise-despite-security-efforts