Cyberthreats Rise by ‘Overly Relying’ on Malware Fixes: CrowdStrike

The cyberthreat environment “remains fierce,” as “inherent vulnerabilities” in widely used operating systems “leave companies of all sizes open to attack and provide a rich feeding ground for sophisticated and novice e-criminals alike,” said CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz on a call Tuesday for fiscal Q2 ended July 31. “The lessons learned from recent attacks emphasize that a breach involves more than just malware.” Companies “overly relying” on malware prevention have the biggest vulnerabilities, he said. More than half of recent threat detections “were not malware-based,” evidence that attackers are “exploiting the proliferation of vulnerabilities and abusing systemic weaknesses,” he said. The early July ransomware attack on Kaseya servers should serve as a “reminder to the far-reaching impact of a supply chain breach and the importance of a zero-trust architecture,” said Kurtz. “Most ransomware outbreaks have a compromised identity component. Shoring up this threat vector is critical to stopping breaches.” A new strategic alliance with Verizon positions the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity platform as part of Verizon's business security portfolio “to provide comprehensive endpoint and workload protection that spans prevention, detection and response capabilities,” he said.