The rising threat of fileless malware

Threat actors are increasing their use of fileless malware for one simple reason: most organizations aren’t prepared to detect it. Education is the first step in determining what threat these new attacks pose and what you can do to detect and stop fileless malware attacks.

Fileless malware is a significant and increasing threat. While awareness of that fact is growing, there’s still confusion among security practitioners and vendors about the nature of the threat and the requirements for a successful defense strategy.

Part of that confusion is because of most of the security methods, solutions and routines used to detect and prevent cyber security threats remain firmly grounded in addressing file-based attacks. As with any new type of cyber threat, many security-focused professionals need a point of reference, or newsworthy attack, as their driver for altering, updating or replacing their current security workflows.

The goal of every security organization is not to be the first victim of that attack.

A recent survey by Ponemon, the 2017 State of Endpoint Security Risk, showed that fileless attacks rose, as a percent of all malware attacks, from 20% in 2016 to 29% in 2017. It estimated that in 2018, fileless attacks would rise to 35%. Of the 54% of respondents that indicated they were compromised by at least one attack, 77% said those successful
breaches were from fileless attacks. Continue reading →