With almost RM600mil in losses recorded in 2022 due to cybercrime*, businesses and organisations in Malaysia are urged to get ready for the age of generative AI and be better equipped against cyberthreats.
The latest edition of the ESET Security Days revealed how natural language processing (NLP) transformers, similar to technology behind generative AI, can be used in cybersecurity defenders to enhance the detection of various threats, such as ransomware, targeted attacks, phishing and security vulnerabilities.
“As cyber threats continue to grow in complexity and frequency, ESET Security Days 2023 emphasised the utmost importance of understanding and addressing these threats to safeguard sensitive data, protect digital assets, and ensure the resilience of businesses and individuals in an increasingly interconnected and AI-driven world,” said Robert Lipovsky, ESET Principal Threat Intelligence Researcher.
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Lipovsky explained that Malaysia is being targeted by cyberattackers on the global stage. He said among some significant findings by ESET showed a 38% increase in malware detection in the country last year compared to 2021.
“Topping the list of these detections was a very old exploit, (CVE-2017-11882) affecting Microsoft Office, which has been patched in 2017. Another exploit that is on our radar is Log4j, which has also been patched since it was first reported in 2021.
“It is incredibly worrying that our telemetry detected a 407% increase in Log4j exploits in Malaysia in the first four months of 2023 compared to the end of last year – with old vulnerabilities still being used to target organisations in Malaysia.”
On the other hand, he added that remote desktop protocol attacks (RDP), which made headlines in the past three years due to the remote working trend, have dropped by 90% in 2022.
“Our insights reinforced the fact that threat actors are constantly adapting their strategy to target organisations in Malaysia based on emerging trends in the country as well as what cybercriminals find work best,” Lipovsky said.
At the event today, speakers also acknowledged the need to be prepared against AI-assisted threats such as generative AI tools being used to generate deepfake content or voice-based attacks for sophisticated social engineering tactics.
Meanwhile, Parvinder Walia, ESET President for Asia Pacific and Japan, said: “Today, ESET detects an average of 300,000 never-before-seen threats per day and this is expected to further increase because of AI. We have now witnessed bad actors using generative AI to dramatically improve threats by making them harder to detect.
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“At ESET, we continue to invest heavily in our R&D and create powerful tools like Augur, our advanced machine learning engine, to stay ahead of the threat landscape and provide customers with state-of-the-art cybersecurity protection, Walia said.
Walia added that ESET has seen 3 out of 4 SMBs in Europe and North America indicate in a recent survey that they have either or will be using enterprise-grade cybersecurity solutions, such as Extended Detection & Response (XDR), to better safeguard themselves from the latest threats.
“We have also seen the same appetite for enterprise-grade solutions amongst the SMBs in Malaysia. This is why we are enabling SMBs to embrace this by lowering the number of seats required for our XDR solutions to 25 devices as well as introducing managed services (MDR), where customers can get ESET-certified professionals to deploy and manage their XDR solutions for them.”
ESET has been deploying machine learning since the 1990s and it has become a key component of its multilayered protection featured in solutions such as the Extended Detection & Response (XDR).
For more information and to explore ESET cybersecurity solutions, please visit www.eset.com
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