Social Engineering Leads APT Attack Vectors

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/231601413

By Mathew J. Schwartz
InformationWeek
September 14, 2011

The number-one advanced persistent threat (APT) attack vector is now not 
technology, but social engineering. Furthermore, security is no longer 
about trying to keep all intruders outside of the network perimeter, but 
rather acknowledging that security today involves living in a state of 
constant compromise.

Those are some key findings that came out of a summit held in Washington 
last week by RSA, the security division of EMC, as well as TechAmerica, 
a technology trade association. The summit involved about 100 "c-level" 
managers--CIOs, CTOs, and a few CEOs--plus senior lawyers, all drawn 
from large, well-known businesses and government agencies, who were 
gathered to discuss the best way to combat APTs.

"It wasn't some vendor-driven thing," said Eddie Schwartz, CSO of RSA, 
in an interview. Rather, he said, it was aimed at updating current 
approaches to security, in light of the types of advanced--and 
oftentimes, persistent and hard-to-detect--threats that have 
successfully exploited numerous organizations, including RSA.

One of the summit's major findings is that social engineering attacks 
are now the primary threat vector used to compromise businesses and 
government agencies. But as employees have become much more of a risk, 
what hasn't changed, said Schwartz, is "the degree to which anything had 
been done about it, or investments shifted, or program emphasis shifted, 
versus just spending money on perimeter security technologies."

[...]


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