Cisco Cognitive Threat Analytics

Defenders face two significant challenges in today’s complex threat landscape. First, the number and variety of malware types and families are increasing—so much so that automation of detection and response efforts is now a must. Second, the volume of encrypted web traffic—both legitimate and malici…

written by Martin Rehak and Blake Anderson, on behalf of Cognitive and ETA teams Introduction How many engineers does it take to find malware in encrypted traffic? In case of Cisco, the core of machine learning team that enables Encrypted Traffic Analysis (ETA) is about 50 engineers, security resear…

Brute force attacks have existed long before the Internet. As a cryptanalytic attack, it started being used as an attempt to access encrypted data when there were no other options available. With the rise of the Internet, this type of attack was quickly adopted. In a nutshell, a brute force attack c…

Today, knowing who is using your network is table stakes. What’s essential is knowing how the network is being accessed, what applications are being used, when they are used and most importantly, whether or not those applications are safe enough and compliant with your organization’s policies. Indep…

Our data shows that there are 5 to 10 breaches per 1000 seats every week. That number is staggering and exemplifies the limits of traditional prevention. Most of these attacks will be done using repackaged malware distributed by known threat actors. We also see that such attacks not only remain unde…

For more than two decades, malicious actors have been evolving their Phishing techniques to effectively achieve their goals. From poorly crafted scams to extremely well crafted documents, Phishing attacks keep being a very effective technique in the attackers toolbox. Anyone can be a target. While m…

One of your sales people, Susan, is on the road putting some finishing touches on a presentation before a big meeting. Using the hotel Wi-Fi she does a quick search to see if there’s any relevant company or industry news she needs to know about before meeting with the client. She clicks on several w…

This blog post was authored by Veronica Valeros and Lukas Machlica Malicious actors are constantly evolving their techniques in order to evade detection. It is not only the sophistication or the rapid pace of change that is challenging us as defenders, but the scale of attacks. With the continuous f…

Adware has been around for a while now. In principle, displaying advertising in order to finance your software is not necessarily something bad. Users are used to seeing advertising everywhere: newspapers, magazines, and websites. When advertising was introduced to software, users had a surprisingly…