It’s a new platform… So why use an old (broken) security approach?

When it comes to protecting network endpoints against more cunning and deceitful modern malware attacks, deploying proven security tools to prevent malicious code from exploiting your system is job #1. Unfortunately, the cat-and-mouse game between IT security professionals and hackers is not easily won, if ever won at all. The key, of course, is to stay one step ahead of your adversary at all times.
That said, what continues to baffle me is the ongoing practice of re-applying beatable security technologies to evolving malware, and expecting a different outcome. Time and time again, we’ve seen how increasingly ineffective traditional anti-malware products like antivirus software are at stopping modern attacks.
More recently, we’re seeing how cyber criminals can rapidly rewrite code overnight to evade even the latest security updates. The article, “Apple’s malware detection update circumvented in 8 hours,” shows us how quickly malware developers are creating new variants that can bypass security updates mere hours after the update is available. But this doesn’t apply to Macs alone. I’ve also recently talked about the Microsoft security update that was out all but three days before hackers were conducting active attacks on the same patched vulnerability.
The way I see it, it’s wrong to apply a known broken security approach to any platform, but especially wrong to do so on new ones. Whether it is a Mac, Linux, tablet or smartphone, why on earth would you use an old, ineffective approach to secure a new platform?? Doing so puts your network endpoints and critical business data at risk, and it gives cyber criminals the upper hand.
Putting short-term fixes on long-term problems is not the answer. Instead of deploying reactive solutions and hoping for the best, we need to approach IT security with a proactive vision in mind. We need a solution that provides proactive security, minimal performace impacts and clear visibility / risk profiling of all applications installed in our environment. What we need are application control solutions like CoreTrace Bouncer.

by JT Keating