ePLDT partners with Acronis offering better Cyber Protection Solutions to Business and Enterprise

With the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, enterprises need to employ Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans to ensure continued operations given these uncertain times.

To cater to businesses, ePLDT, the ICT arm of PLDT Enterprise, has strategic partnered with Acronis to bolster its portfolio. Renowned for setting the standard for cyber protection, Acronis offers its award-winning AI-based Active Protection technology, blockchain-based authentication and unique hybrid-cloud architecture to protect all data in physical, virtual, cloud, mobile workloads and applications – all at a low and predictable cost. Both organizations strengthened their portfolio and footprint following the partnership on marketing and technology.

Jovy Hernandez, ePLDT President & CEO and SVP & Head for PLDT and Smart Enterprise Business Groups adds “Part of our mission is to innovate and co-innovate with partners in support of our thrust which is to simplify the complex for our customers. We are pleased to partner with Acronis for us to truly deliver solutions of real value to the market and we are sure that our combined expertise in DR systems will enable enterprises to work with ease of mind and confidence,”

According to Acronis’ recent Cyber Readiness Report 2020, 92% of global companies adopted new technologies to enable remote work. Same research shows 50% of these companies have encountered cyberattacks at least once a week in the past few months making it critical for enterprises to ensure their preparedness for the new way of doing business and be able to respond to disruptions.

Vic Tria, PLDT FVP and Enterprise Revenue Group Head states “The increasing need to employ work-from-home arrangements today requires extreme vigilance when it comes to securing a company’s IT infrastructure. We believe that this partnership will allow us to better improve the Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans of our customers in different industries - which are crucial given these uncertain times,"

Through the partnership, ePLDT will be offering solutions that will leverage on the Acronis Cyber Cloud - a platform that enables service providers to deliver data protection in an easy, efficient and secure way. One solution is Data Back-up and Recovery Solution, customers can gain access to hybrid cloud backup, recovery and AI-powered anti-malware, manageable from a single, comprehensive console.

Jeff Mendoza, PLDT Enterprise Asia Pacific Regional Head shares “These platforms will enable ePLDT to deliver not only an easy, and efficient access to backup and disaster recovery for its customers, thru a single management console, but also provide an additional layer of cyber protection,”

ePLDT and Acronis has formalized their partnership with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, with the said new products set to be introduced subsequently.

“We are delighted to closely collaborate with ePLDT on delivering innovative and impactful solutions to businesses here in the Asia Pacific, right after announcing the launch of Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, our fully integrated cyber protection solution for businesses” said Neil Morarji, Acronis General Manager for APAC. “Moving forward, our portfolio of services will allow companies to ensure their ultimate cyber protection – one that solves safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) challenges of the modern digital world, no matter what form their work operations take. They will stay protected with superior and expert support from ePLDT and Acronis.”

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Philippine Potential Economic Loss at $3.5 Billion Due to Cybersecurity threats - Microsoft

Microsoft commissioned a study to be conducted by Frost & Sullivan regarding “Understanding the Cybersecurity Threat Landscape in Asia Pacific: Securing the Modern Enterprise in a Digital World” that  aims to provide business and IT decision makers with insights on the Economic cost of Cybersecurity Breaches in the region and identify the gaps in organizations’ cybersecurity strategies. The study involved a survey of 1,300 business and IT decision makers ranging from mid-sized organizations (250 to 499 employees) to large-sized organizations (>than 500 employees).

Security experts discuss the economic impact of cybersecurity in the PH during Microsoft’s study launch. From L-R: Hans Bayaborda, Managing Director, Microsoft Philippines; Mary Jo Schrade, Assistant General Counsel, Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, Microsoft Asia; Angel “Lito” S. Averia, Jr., President, Philippine Computer Emergency Response Team; Atty. Raul Cortez, Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs Lead, Microsoft Philippines.

The  Microsoft and Frost & Sullivan study revealed that the potential economic loss in the Philippines due to cybersecurity incidents can hit a staggering US$3.5 billion which is 1.1 percent of the Philippines’ total GDP of US$305 billion[1]. In addition, more than half of the organizations surveyed in the Philippines have either experienced a cybersecurity incident (18%) or are not sure if they had one as they have not performed proper forensics or data breach assessment (34%).

“As companies embrace the opportunities presented by cloud and mobile computing to connect with customers and optimize operations, they take on new risks,” said Hans Bayaborda, Managing Director, Microsoft Philippines. “With traditional IT boundaries disappearing the adversaries now have many new targets to attack. Companies face the risk of significant financial loss, damage to customer satisfaction and market reputation — as has been made all too clear by recent high-profile breaches.”

The True Cost of Cybersecurity Incidents – Economic, Opportunity and Job Losses

The study also focuses more on economics and employment.

The study finds that a large-sized organization in the Philippines can possibly incur an economic loss of US$7.5 million, more than 200 times higher than the average economic loss for a mid-sized organization (US$35,000); and Cybersecurity attacks have resulted in job losses across different functions in seven in ten (72%) organizations that have experienced an incident over the last 12 months.

To measure the cost of cybercrime, Frost & Sullivan has created an Economic Loss Model based on macro-economic data and insights shared by the survey respondents. This model factors in three kinds of losses which could be incurred due to a cybersecurity breach -  Direct, Indirect and Induced.

Direct are Financial losses associated with a cybersecurity incident which includes loss of productivity, fines, remediation cost, etc;

Indirect is the opportunity cost to the organization such as customer churn due to reputation loss; and

Induced is the impact of cyber breach to the broader ecosystem and economy, such as the decrease in consumer and enterprise spending.

“Although the direct losses from cybersecurity breaches are most visible, they are but just the tip of the iceberg,” said Edison Yu, Vice President and Asia Pacific Head of Enterprise for Frost & Sullivan. “There are many other hidden losses that we have to consider from both the indirect and induced perspectives, and the economic loss for organizations suffering from cybersecurity attacks can be often underestimated.”

In addition to financial losses, cybersecurity incidents are also undermining the Philippines organizations’ ability to capture future opportunities in today’s digital economy, with more than half (57%) respondents stating that their enterprise has put off digital transformation efforts due to the fear of cyber-risks.

Key Cyberthreats and Gaps in the Philippines Organizations’ Cybersecurity Strategies

Besides external threats, the research also revealed key gaps in organizations’ cybersecurity approach to protect their digital estate:

Although high-profile cyberattacks, such as ransomware, have been garnering a lot of attention from enterprises, the study found that for organizations in the Philippines that have encountered cybersecurity incidents, data exfiltration and data corruption are the biggest concern as they have the highest impact with the slowest recovery time.

Security an afterthought: Only 44% of organizations consider cybersecurity before the start of a digital transformation project. Majority of respondents (56%) either think about cybersecurity only after they start on the project or do not consider it at all. This limits their ability to conceptualize and deliver a “secure-by-design” project, potentially leading to insecure products going out into the market;

 Creating a Complex Environment: Negating the popular belief that deploying a large portfolio of cybersecurity solutions will render stronger protection, the survey revealed that 17% of respondents with more than 50 cybersecurity solutions could recover from cyberattacks within an hour. In contrast, more than twice as many respondents (38%) with fewer than 10 cybersecurity solutions responded that they can recover from cyberattacks within an hour; and

Lacking cybersecurity strategy: While more and more organizations are considering digital transformation to gain competitive advantage, the study has shown that 46% of respondents see cybersecurity strategy only as a means to safeguard the organization against cyberattacks rather than a strategic business enabler. A mere 25% of organizations see cybersecurity strategy as a digital transformation enabler.

“The ever-changing threat environment is challenging, but there are ways to be more effective using the right blend of modern technology, strategy, and expertise,” added Hans. “Microsoft is empowering businesses in the Philippines to take advantage of digital transformation by enabling them to embrace the technology that’s available to them, securely through its secure platform of products and services, combined with unique intelligence and broad industry partnerships.”

Microsoft tags Artifical Intelligence (AI) as the Next Frontier in Cybersecurity Defense

In a digital world where cyberthreats are constantly evolving and attack surface is rapidly expanding, AI is becoming a potent opponent against cyberattacks as it can detect and act on threat vectors based on data insights. The study reveals that more than almost four in five (79%) organizations in the Philippines have either adopted or are looking to adopt an AI approach towards boosting cybersecurity.

AI’s ability to rapidly analyze and respond to unprecedented quantities of data is becoming indispensable in a world where cyberattacks’ frequency, scale and sophistication continue to increase.

An AI-driven cybersecurity architecture will be more intelligent and be equipped with predictive abilities to allow organizations to fix or strengthen their security posture before problems emerge. It will also grant companies with the capabilities to accomplish tasks, such as identifying cyberattacks, removal of persistent threats and fixing bugs, faster than any human could, making it an increasingly vital element of any organizations’ cybersecurity strategy.

Recommendations for the Modern Enterprise in a Digital World

AI is but one of the many aspects that organizations need to incorporate or adhere to in order to maintain a robust cybersecurity posture. For a cybersecurity practice to be successful, organizations need to consider People, Process and Technology, and how each of these contributes to the overall security posture of the organization.

To help organizations better withstand and respond to cyberattacks and malware infections, Experts suggest Five Best Practices in improving their defense against cybersecurity threats:

Position cybersecurity as a digital transformation enabler: Disconnect between cybersecurity practices and digital transformation effort creates a lot of frustration for the employees. Cybersecurity is a requirement for digital transformation to guide and keep the company safe through its journey. Conversely, digital transformation presents an opportunity for cybersecurity practices to abandon aging practices to embrace new methods of addressing today’s risks;

Continue to invest in strengthening your security fundamentals: Over 90% of cyber incidents can be averted by maintaining the most basic best practices.  Maintaining strong passwords, conditional use of multi-factor authentication against suspicious authentications, keeping device operating systems, software and anti-malware protection up-to-date and genuine can rapidly raise the bar against cyberattacks. This should include not just tool-sets but also training and policies to support a stronger fundamental;

Maximize skills and tools by leveraging integrated best-of-suite tools. The best tools are useless in the hands of the amateur. Reduce the number of tools and the complexity of your security operations to allow your operators to hone their proficiency with the available tools. Prioritizing best-of-suite tools is a great way to maximize your risk coverage without the risk of introducing too many tools and complexity to the environment. This is especially true if tools within the suite are well-integrated to take advantage of their counterparts;

Assessment, review and continuous compliance: The organization should be in a continuous state of compliance. Assessments and reviews should be conducted regularly to test for potential gaps that may occur as the organization is rapidly transforming and address these gaps. The board should keep tab on not just compliance to industry regulations but also how the organization is progressing against security best practices; and

Leverage AI and automation to increase capabilities and capacity: With security capabilities in short supply, organizations need to look to automation and AI to improve the capabilities and capacity of their security operations. Current advancements in AI has shown a lot of promise, not just in raising detections that would otherwise be missed but also in reasoning over how the various data signals should be interpreted with recommended actions. Such systems have seen great success in cloud implementations where huge volumes of data can be processed rapidly. Ultimately, leveraging automation and AI can free up cybersecurity talents to focus on higher-level activities.

To better understand the cyberthreats happening globally and in Asia Pacific, please download the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report Volume 23 here > https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-Security-Intelligence-Report-Vol-23-Landing-Page-eBook.html

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FortiGuard Labs On Evolving Threat Trends in Cybersecurity for 2016

Fortinet® global leader in high performance cybersecurity solutions – and its threat research division, FortiGuard Labs, have made their annual predictions of the most significant trends in malware and network security going into 2016 with their New Rules: The Evolving Threat Landscape in 2016 report revealing the new trends and strategies that FortiGuard researchers anticipate cyber criminals to arm their customers with the knowledge that they need to maintain their advantage in the cybersecurity arms race and proactively change the way all businesses look at their security strategies going into the new year.

The top cybersecurity trends for 2016 includes Increased M2M Attacks and Propagation Between Devices, Worms and Viruses Designed to Specifically Attack IoT Devices, Attacks On Cloud and Virtualized Infrastructure, New Techniques That Thwart Forensic Investigations and Hide Evidence of Attacks, Malware That Can Evade Even Advanced Sandboxing Technologies.

FortiGuard researchers anticipate that IoT will become central to “land and expand” attacks in which hackers will take advantage of vulnerabilities in connected consumer devices to get a foothold within the corporate networks and hardware to which they connect. They expect to see further development of exploits and malware that target trusted communication protocols between these devices. There will be a magnitude of damage from worms and viruses when they can propagate among millions or billions of devices from wearables to medical hardware.

There is also potential threat for malware to escape from a hypervisor and access the host operating system in a virtualized environment as exemplified by Venom vulnerability. With growing reliance on virtualization and both private and hybrid clouds as well as with most many apps access cloud-based systems, cybercriminals will definitely target this for gain.

Rombertik garnered significant attention in 2015 as one of the first major pieces in the wild as a “blastware” designed to destroy or disable a system when it is detected. Another type is “ghostware” where it is designed to erase the indicators of compromise that security systems are designed to detect making it very difficult for organizations to track the extent of data loss associated with an attack.

Two-faced malware, though, behaves normally while under inspection but then delivers a malicious payload once it has been passed by the sandbox which can be challenging to detect but can also interfere with threat intelligence mechanisms that rely on sandbox rating systems.

Each of these trends represents a significant and novel challenge for both organizations deploying security solutions and for vendors developing them. Fortinet is on the cutting edge of threat research and network security, providing complete network protection from edge to endpoint, continuously updated by FortiGuard and the threat intelligence feeds from millions of devices deployed worldwide. 

As Derek Manky, global security strategist for Fortinet explained, “FortiGuard Labs was formed over a decade ago to monitor and detect the latest threats, zero days, and emerging malware to provide the best possible protection for our customers. We leverage our incredible visibility into the global threat landscape to develop actionable threat intelligence, allowing us to respond quickly to new threats.” 

Ken Xie, Fortinet founder and CEO, also noted that “As we look ahead at the threats associated with our increasing connectedness and the proliferation of new devices, Fortinet is committed to delivering uncompromising security and further enhancing our solutions to meet both the current and future needs of our customers.”  

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