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Today's Internet threat landscape is highly dynamic, as thousands of malicious cybercriminals disseminate hundreds of millions of global threats daily. While some are hacktivist organisations and even nation-states, the main threat remains that of well-funded cybercriminal gangs. Their goals are simple - to steal data that can be readily monetised, such as credit card data or vital intellectual property, and generate a high return on investment (ROI) from their efforts.

Techniques such as phishing emails, waterhole attacks and 'malvertising' (compromised web ads) are used to lure targets into clicking on malicious links. Malware is then silently installed, creating a bridgehead inside the network, enabling criminals gradually to increase access privileges, without alerting suspicion. Whether the objective is to steal information or commit financial fraud, they have free rein to do what they want.

ANY ORGANISATION CAN BE A TARGET
A surprising finding from the Verizon 2014 Data Breach Investigations Report was that the distribution of breaches was consistent, regardless of industry, and ranging from small and medium-sized businesses to large enterprises. It states: "…we don't see any industries flying completely under the radar. And that's the real takeaway here - everyone is vulnerable to some type of event".

MOBILE AND BYOD OPENS NEW DOORS FOR CYBERCRIMINALS
Mass adoption of mobility, cloud computing and BYOD (bring-your-own-device) policies render the classic network perimeter obsolete. The ubiquitous Web access and high utility of these technologies is driving an explosion in their use, leading to an increase in the number of under-protected devices used outside the firewall. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, this trend also triggered a massive increase in Web-borne mobile malware, so practically any worker can now unwittingly bring malware back inside the company network. This is why it's vitally important to protect end-user devices of all types, whether company or end-user owned, to stop infection by malware.

MIND THE GAP
In the battle to defend against the ever-increasing volume and variety of threats, security solutions such as firewalls, signature-based antivirus and blacklisting may be ineffective. This is because criminals know that the data that powers them may lag new threats by days or even weeks. Cybercriminals have now further raised the stakes by developing malware that incorporates evasion techniques to 'sense' when it is being inspected by security tools and turn off malicious operations until the inspection ends. These combine to create a security 'gap'.

TO CLOSE THE GAP, WEB SECURITY MUST EVOLVE
Security vendors must deploy Big Data systems capable of analysing tens of millions of data points about threats in real-time, as they emerge. "A dynamic sensor grid is required to effectively stay on top of a dynamic threat space," says IT security analyst Richard Stiennon. "Only with a massive collection and analysis capability can a solution get close to providing complete coverage."

Today, a web security solution must:

• Fuse threat data on a global scale, using automated collection and analysis techniques to build a threat intelligence picture of the Internet right now
• Detect new threats by inference through correlation of disparate threat behaviours, as well as by direct detection
• Apply threat intelligence to enforcement points in near real-time to ensure continuous, consistent and accurate application of security policy
• Deliver comprehensive protection to any type of end-user device, at all times, however it connects to the Internet and at any location.

The good news is that, when we achieve this, we destroy the ROI for cybercriminals, forcing them to move on and look for easier targets elsewhere.