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What is a VPN and How Does it Increase Your Online Security and Privacy?

By Trend Micro

The number of VPN users has grown considerably over the past few years. According to the report of Go-Globe, 25% of netizens worldwide have used a VPN at least once in the last 30 days. Recently, VPN usage has surged in many countries and its popularity may see VPN usage surpass the estimated profit of USD$27.10 billion by the end of 2020. The VPN global market only seems to increase as time goes by. So, why is that? What do VPNs provide that make them so attractive?

What is a VPN?

A VPN, or a Virtual Private Network, creates a secure communication “tunnel” from your computer to the internet. It encrypts your connection and prevents others from seeing the data you’re transferring. This keeps your data secure from any spying attempts—including from home over your wired connection, but particularly on public Wi-Fi networks, when you’re out and about in places such as coffee shops, restaurants, airports and hotels. It helps ensure that no one can steal your personal details, passwords, or credit card information.

How does a VPN work and why you need a VPN service?

Among other things, a VPN can conceal your IP address to make your online actions virtually untraceable and anonymous, providing greater privacy for everything you do. In fact, there are so many ways a VPN can protect your privacy and security, we need to take a deeper look at what other benefits a VPN can provide.

    1. Safeguard personal information

    This is the era of mobility and most transactions are being done by people on-the-go using their mobile devices to exchange data over public networks. From online shopping, to mobile banking or simply checking emails and social media accounts, these activities can expose your personal information and sensitive data to hackers and cybercriminals. This particularly applies to users relying on public Wi-Fi. Using a VPN will help to mitigate unwanted leakage or theft by securing data in transit to and from the systems that typically try to collect and store your private data.

      1. Access better streaming contents from other locations

      One of the main drivers for using a VPN is to access better streaming content and restricted websites from the region you’re accessing the internet from. This may be true in your own country, but when traveling abroad, there are also chances that you cannot visit a popular website or a social media platform from the country you’re visiting. While using a VPN, you can connect to an IP address in your country and have full access to your favorite media contents and avoid wasting membership fees that you will likely pay for this streaming service.

        1. Enhance browsing privacy

        Some retail apps, social media platforms, and search engines continuously collect and analyze results of your search history. They keep track of all your browsing activities such as items you viewed, contents you liked, and things you tapped and clicked, so they can provide you with more targeted contents and monetize these by showing the same information in your feed through ads.

        Note that, simply clearing your browsing history does not completely remove traces of these searches, and targeted ads can get annoying. This is where a VPN can help enhance your browsing privacy. The VPN hides your browser cached data and location from advertisers, which prevents them from serving up content based on your searches and location.

          1. Save cost on communicating with family and friends abroad

          Another motivating factor for the use of a VPN is to save on the cost of communicating with families and friends abroad. There are countries implementing restrictions on the use of certain messaging apps, banning their services. If you are planning to visit a country with such a restriction, a VPN can bypass this constraint, which allows you to make use of your trusted messaging app, eliminate the cost of long-distance calls to family and friends while abroad—and at the same time, maintain the level of security and encryption the messaging app provides.

            1. Escape content-based bandwidth-throttling

            The internet has evolved into streaming more content—videos, music, and more—and ISPs have responded by making higher data usage and higher throughput (bandwidth) pay-as-you-use-more services. But content is still at issue, particularly after the December 2017 FCC ruling. Potential ISP throttling based on content type, source, or destination (e.g., BitTorrent traffic), which could give priority to business over personal usage, is one of the reasons why everyday people are using VPN services, because a VPN provides more usage anonymity, preventing ISPs from potentially tracking your activities and limiting your bandwidth usage accordingly.

            Choosing the right VPN for you

            Now that you have some understanding of what a VPN is, and what benefits it can give you, it is also important to choose the right VPN for you.

            Due to regulatory requirements and laws governing data privacy and securing personal information online, the demand for VPNs is growing. In response, there are a large number of VPN providers in the market today. So how do you choose a reliable VPN? Here are some criteria to help you pick one that best suits your needs:

            • Faster and more data is better. Using a VPN can often decrease the speed of your internet connection, so you should pick a provider that has a good number of servers and locations and doesn’t pre-throttle your bandwidth. Some also have data limits, so you should opt for those with a higher data limit per month
            • Provides the best encryption. Look for a VPN providing sophisticated ciphers such as 256-bit AES end-to-end encryption.
            • Ensures safe browsing. Look for VPN that can filter and block malicious websites, online fraud, and internet scams and automatically safeguard your internet connection.
            • Provides full anonymity. It is crucial that a VPN vendor has a clear privacy policy. Trusted VPNs will not track the user’s websites, payment information, or online transactions, and do not keep logs.
            • Supports simultaneous devices. Select a VPN that is compatible with your devices and operating systems and can provide you a good number of simultaneous connections on your devices.
            • Cost versus use case. Heavier business usage should be contrasted with everyday consumer use. To pay less for the service (VPNs typically cost from $5 to $12 per month per device, though multi-device bundles are less), you might accept some data limits, if your use case is lighter; sacrifice some speed, if you’re not streaming movies when you’re out and about, (unlikely during the coronavirus lockdown); or some cross-regional server-selection capability, if you’re not travelling in content-restricted regions (since out-of-country travel is also being hampered by the pandemic).

            Trend Micro’s Home Division provides two low-cost, safety-focused VPN solutions for everyday users: Trend Micro VPN Proxy One and Trend Micro Wi-Fi Protection, both of which can address light-to-medium VPN needs and meet most of the checklist criteria above.

            Trend Micro VPN Proxy One offers fast, secure, stable and anonymous proxy connections for you to access various websites and applications. It connects to the best Trend Micro VPN server intelligently, without you having to do it, and does not limit bandwidth consumption. Trend Micro VPNs do not track your online activities, ensuring you a secure digital life and protecting your online privacy. Trend Micro VPN Proxy One is targeted to Mac and iOS devices.

            Trend Micro Wi-Fi Protection turns any public hotspot into a secure Wi-Fi network and VPN with bank-grade data encryption to keep your information safe from hackers. While your VPN is active, Trend Micro Wi-Fi Protection provides exceptional web threat protection and checks websites you visit to safeguard your browsing from online fraud and internet scam. The VPN automatically kicks in when connecting to a Wi-Fi network with low security, such as one with no encryption. Trend Micro Wi-Fi Protection is available for all platforms (PC, Mac, Android, and iOS). Bundles can be purchased for multiple devices and platforms and some bundles can include other Trend Micro products, depending on the region.

            Go to the Apple App Store for more details on Trend Micro VPN Proxy One; or for a 30-day trial or to buy, go here: Mac | iOS.

            Or visit Trend Micro Wi-Fi Protection for more information, or to buy the multi-platform solution.

            The post What is a VPN and How Does it Increase Your Online Security and Privacy? appeared first on .

            Connected Security Solutions Helps City of Tyler’s CIO to Reduce Costs While Enabling Delivery of Enhanced Community & Public Safety Services

            By Trend Micro

            “We’re here to serve” is Benny Yazdanpanahi’s motto as CIO for City of Tyler located in Texas. Supporting a population of approximately 107,000, Yazdanpanahi’s vision for his city relies on the use of data to deliver exceptional services to citizens, today and into the future.

             

            Since joining the city nearly 19 years ago, Yazdanpanahi has continually challenged himself and his small IT team to stay agile and to keep the needs of the city’s citizens at the forefront. Today, Yazdanpanahi and his team use IT systems to make more informed decisions, enhance community services, and improve public safety.

             

            “Our citizens, and especially the younger generation, want immediate access to information and online services,” said Yazdanpanahi. “We want to keep pace with the latest technologies, not only for citizens but also to make our city employees more effective and efficient.”

            But Yazdanpanahi knows that a highly secure IT environment is essential to their continued success. “Many US cities have been hacked, so security is on top of everyone’s mind. As a city, we want to provide great services, but we have to provide them in a highly secure manner.”

            To accomplish those security goals with limited resources and staff, Tyler’s leaders have been collaborating with Trend Micro for several years. The cybersecurity giant has brought a hands-on approach and an ability to stay ahead of the threats. Their adaptability to the threat landscape strengthens the city’s security posture and empowers the IT team to focus on serving the community.

             

            The city has been able to stay secure without additional staff and resources. City employees don’t spend time resolving IT issues and improve their productivity to focus on things that mater for the city.

             

            “If you don’t collaborate with a partner that’s highly experienced in the security field, you can easily get blindsided,” said Yazdanpanahi. “We need someone there, day in and out, focused on security. Trend Micro knows how to protect cities like us. They provide the kind of north, south, east, and west protection that makes my job easier and allows us to use our data to accomplish new, exciting things for our city.”

             

            Read more about Benny’s journey to securing the city:

            https://www.trendmicro.com/en_ca/about/customer-stories/city-of-tyler.html

             

             

            The post Connected Security Solutions Helps City of Tyler’s CIO to Reduce Costs While Enabling Delivery of Enhanced Community & Public Safety Services appeared first on .

            ESG Findings on Trend Micro Cloud-Powered XDR Drives Monumental Business Value

            By Trend Micro

            This material was published by ESG Research Insights Report, Validating Trend Micro’s Approach and Enhancing GTM Intelligence, 2020.

             

             

             

            The post ESG Findings on Trend Micro Cloud-Powered XDR Drives Monumental Business Value appeared first on .

            Ask Me Anything – Celebrating The Fifth Anniversary Of My Monthly Threat Webinar

            By Jon Clay (Global Threat Communications)

            In July 2015, I did my first threat webinar. I had planned to do it on a monthly basis, and never imagined I would still be doing it five years later, but here I am, still creating monthly webinars. I still do. I started the webinar series to help people understand the different threats targeting our customers and I have always tried to focus on three areas:

            • Share information on what threats our customers deal with regularly
            • Talk about an actual threat and explain how it works
            • Discuss technologies versus solutions

            This last point, discussing technologies versus solutions, has been one of the key items I try to follow as much as possible – after all, the goal of my webinars is to be educational, not a sales pitch.

            Coming from a technical background, BS in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University (Go Spartans!!), I enjoy learning about the new technologies being used to detect the latest threats and to ensure you know what to look for when selecting a vendor and/or a security solution. Over the years, I’ve discussed everything from APTs, coinminers, exploits, messaging threats, ransomware, underground activity and lots in between. It is pretty easy to find topics to discuss, as there is so much going on in our industry, and with the malicious actors regularly shifting their tactics, techniques and procedures, I can keep the content fairly fresh.

            I really enjoy having guest speakers on my webinars to mix things up a bit for the viewers as well, as I know my limitations – there are just too many threats out there to keep up with all of them. The main reason I love doing the threat webinars is that I enjoy sharing information and teaching others about our industry and the threats affecting them.  If you want to check out any of my previous five years of webinars you can watch them here.

            For my fifth year anniversary I wanted to try something different and I would like to do an open Q&A session. As I’ve never done this before, it will certainly be an interesting experience for me, but hopefully for you as well. I hope I can answer a majority of your questions, but I know some of you are way too smart for me, so please bear with me.

            Our registration page for this webinar allows you to submit any pre-session questions that I’ll answer throughout the webinar. You can ask me anything that is on your mind and if I cannot get to your question, I’ll do my best to answer you afterwards in an email.

            I hope to continue to do these webinars for the foreseeable future and I would like to end my post by thanking each and every one of you who has participated in my webinars over the years. It has been a pleasure, and I look forward to answering your questions.

            Take care, stay healthy, and keep on smiling!

            Jon

            The post Ask Me Anything – Celebrating The Fifth Anniversary Of My Monthly Threat Webinar appeared first on .

            Beyond the Endpoint: Why Organizations are Choosing XDR for Holistic Detection and Response

            By Trend Micro

            The endpoint has long been a major focal point for attackers targeting enterprise IT environments. Yet increasingly, security bosses are being forced to protect data across the organization, whether it’s in the cloud, on IoT devices, in email, or on-premises servers. Attackers may jump from one environment to the next in multi-stage attacks and even hide between the layers. So, it pays to have holistic visibility, in order to detect and respond more effectively.

            This is where XDR solutions offer a convincing alternative to EDR and point solutions. But unfortunately, not all providers are created equal. Trend Micro separates themselves from the pack by providing mature security capabilities across all layers, industry-leading threat intelligence, and an AI-powered analytical approach that produces fewer, higher fidelity alerts.

            Under pressure

            It’s no secret that IT security teams today are under extreme pressure. They’re faced with an enemy able to tap into a growing range of tools and techniques from the cybercrime underground. Ransomware, social engineering, fileless malware, vulnerability exploits, and drive-by-downloads, are just the tip of the iceberg. There are “several hundred thousand new malicious programs or unwanted apps registered every day,” according to a new Osterman Research report. It argues that, while endpoint protection must be a “key component” in corporate security strategy, “It can only be one strand” —complemented with protection in the cloud, on the network, and elsewhere.

            There’s more. Best-of-breed approaches have saddled organizations with too many disparate tools over the years, creating extra cost, complexity, management headaches, and security gaps. This adds to the workload for overwhelmed security teams.

            According to Gartner, “Two of the biggest challenges for all security organizations are hiring and retaining technically savvy security operations staff, and building a security operations capability that can confidently configure and maintain a defensive posture as well as provide a rapid detection and response capacity. Mainstream organizations are often overwhelmed by the intersectionality of these two problems.”

            XDR appeals to organizations struggling with all of these challenges as well as those unable to gain value from, or who don’t have the resources to invest in, SIEM or SOAR solutions. So what does it involve?

            What to look for

            As reported by Gartner, all XDR solutions should fundamentally achieve the following:

            • Improve protection, detection, and response
            • Enhance overall productivity of operational security staff
            • Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) to create an effective detection and response capability

            However, the analyst urges IT buyers to think carefully before choosing which provider to invest in. That’s because, in some cases, underlying threat intelligence may be underpowered, and vendors have gaps in their product portfolio which could create dangerous IT blind spots. Efficacy will be a key metric. As Gartner says, “You will not only have to answer the question of does it find things, but also is it actually finding things that your existing tooling is not.”

            A leader in XDR

            This is where Trend Micro XDR excels. It has been designed to go beyond the endpoint, collecting and correlating data from across the organization, including; email, endpoint, servers, cloud workloads, and networks. With this enhanced context, and the power of Trend Micro’s AI algorithms and expert security analytics, the platform is able to identify threats more easily and contain them more effectively.

            Forrester recently recognized Trend Micro as a leader in enterprise detection and response, saying of XDR, “Trend Micro has a forward-thinking approach and is an excellent choice for organizations wanting to centralize reporting and detection with XDR but have less capacity for proactively performing threat hunting.”

            According to Gartner, fewer than 5% of organizations currently employ XDR. This means there’s a huge need to improve enterprise-wide protection. At a time when corporate resources are being stretched to the limit, Trend Micro XDR offers global organizations an invaluable chance to minimize enterprise risk exposure whilst maximizing the productivity of security teams.

            The post Beyond the Endpoint: Why Organizations are Choosing XDR for Holistic Detection and Response appeared first on .

            Perspectives Summary – What You Said

            By William "Bill" Malik (CISA VP Infrastructure Strategies)

             

            On Thursday, June 25, Trend Micro hosted our Perspectives 2-hour virtual event. As the session progressed, we asked our attendees, composed of +5000 global registrants, two key questions. This blog analyzes those answers.

             

            First, what is your current strategy for securing the cloud?

            Rely completely on native cloud platform security capabilities (AWS, Azure, Google…) 33%

            Add on single-purpose security capabilities (workload protection, container security…) 13%

            Add on security platform with multiple security capabilities for reduced complexity 54%

             

            This result affirms IDC analyst Frank Dickson’s observation that most cloud customers will benefit from a suite offering a range of security capabilities covering multiple cloud environments. For the 15% to 20% of organizations that rely on one cloud provider, purchasing a security solution from that vendor may provide sufficient coverage. The quest for point products (which may be best-of-breed, as well) introduces additional complexity across multiple cloud platforms, which can obscure problems, confuse cybersecurity analysts and business users, increase costs, and reduce efficiency.  The comprehensive suite strategy compliments most organizations’ hybrid, multi-cloud approach.

            Second, and this is multiple choice, how are you enabling secure digital transformation in the cloud today?

             

            This shows that cloud users are open to many available solutions for improving cloud security. The adoption pattern follows traditional on-premise security deployment models. The most commonly cited solution, Network Security/Cloud IPS, recognizes that communication with anything in the cloud requires a trustworthy network. This is a very familiar technique, dating back in the on-premise environment to the introduction of firewalls in the early 1990s from vendors like CheckPoint and supported by academic research as found in Cheswick and Bellovin’s Firewalls and Internet Security (Addison Wesley, 1994).

             

            The frequency of data exposure due to misconfigured cloud instances surely drives Cloud Security Posture Management, certainly aided by the ease of deployment of tools like Cloud One conformity.

             

            The newness of containers in the production environment most likely explains the relatively lower deployment of container security today.

             

            The good news is that organizations do not have to deploy and manage a multitude of point products addressing one problem on one environment. The suite approach simplifies today’s reality and positions the organization for tomorrow’s challenges.

             

            Looking ahead, future growth in industrial IoT and increasing deployments of 5G-based public and non-public networks will drive further innovations, increasing the breadth of the suite approach to securing hybrid, multi-cloud environments.

             

            What do you think? Let me know @WilliamMalikTM.

             

            The post Perspectives Summary – What You Said appeared first on .

            Message from Eva Chen – as a human being, not a CEO: We need to speak out and act against racism

            By Eva Chen

             

            I would like to express my outrage over the brutal killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery – not as the CEO of an international company, but as a human being and a citizen of the world. It makes me very sad, but also intensely frustrated and angry to realize how little is being done around the world to overcome the blatant inequality and racism that persists. The disturbing, high-profile incidents in the past weeks expose in a cruel way how we live in a world where fear, uncertainty and discrimination continue to impact the lives of black people every single day.

             

            As a global society, we should do better; we must be better.

             

            At Trend Micro, we are committed to providing a safe, empathetic and respectful environment where we reject any form of racism and discrimination, with zero tolerance. We not only welcome diversity in our Trend Micro family, we encourage it, whether it is diversity of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, gender identification, sexual orientation, physical ability, age, religion, veteran status, socio-economic status, and political philosophy. We believe it is our different backgrounds and experiences that make us who we are and make us as strong as we are. But we continue to listen and learn how to create equality for all.

             

            I feel very strongly that we all need to do something and become a force for change. We have an obligation towards our communities and our children to leave this world in a better place. I am fortunate as a CEO to be able to use my voice to speak out against any kind of discrimination, against racism in any form. I ask that we all seek to expand our perspectives and heighten our awareness of others. We must open our eyes to the current and ugly truth and challenge any subconscious tendencies to avoid this painful reality of inequality!

             

            Today I am inspired to lift up the voice of a young Trend Micro employee who posted on our internal web site:

             

            “Progress is a process. Unity is part of the process.
            Unity drives awareness…
            Awareness drives education…
            Education drives action…
            Action drives change…
            Let’s make a change!”

             

            These are very difficult times for us as individuals, communities, and as nations. I ask you to join me in doing our part to fight racism – we can’t afford any more lives to be lost, any more children growing up deprived of their opportunities. First and foremost, we need to listen to our black communities and educate ourselves. And we must acknowledge that this is an ongoing issue – and continue to fight inequality every day, even when the protests don’t make headlines anymore. We can all make a difference. Speak out against injustice, listen to the stories of inequality, act, vote and make a change.

             

            Together, we can make this world a better place!

            Eva Chen

            The post Message from Eva Chen – as a human being, not a CEO: We need to speak out and act against racism appeared first on .

            Why CISOs Are Demanding Detection and Response Everywhere

            By Leah MacMillan

            Over the past three decades, we’ve had time at Trend Micro to observe the industry trends that have the biggest impact on our customers. And one of the big things we’ve seen is that threats move largely in tandem with changes to IT infrastructure. This matters today because most organizations are transforming the way they run and manage their infrastructure—a daunting task on its own.

            But with digital transformation also comes an expanded corporate attack surface, driving security leaders to demand enhanced visibility, detection & response across the entire enterprise — this is not just about the endpoint.

            Transforming business

            Over the past five years, there has been a major shift in the way IT infrastructure is delivered, and with that shift, increasing complexity. A big part of this change has been the use of the cloud, reflected in Gartner’s prediction that the market will grow to over $266 billion in 2020. Organizations everywhere are leveraging the cloud and DevOps to rapidly deliver new and differentiated applications and services for their customers, partners and employees. And the use of containers and microservices across a multi-cloud and hybrid environment is increasingly common.

            In addition to leveraging public cloud services like IaaS, organizations are also rapidly adopting SaaS applications like Office 365, and expanding their use of mobile and collaborative applications to support remote working. Some are even arguing that working patterns may never be the same again, following the changes forced on many employers by the Covid-19 pandemic.

            Combine these changes with networks that continue to extend to include branch offices and add new areas to protect like operational technology including industrial systems, and we can certainly see that the challenges facing the modern enterprise look nothing like they did a few years ago.

            Under fire, under pressure

            All of these infrastructure changes make for a broader attack surface that the bad guys can take advantage of, and they’re doing so with an increasingly wide range of tools and techniques. In the cloud there is a new class of vulnerabilities introduced through a greater use of open source, containers, orchestration platforms, supply chain applications and more. For all organizations, the majority of threats still prey upon the user, arriving via email (over 90% of the 52.3 billion we blocked in 2019), and they’re no longer just basic phishing attempts. There’s been an uptick in fileless events designed to bypass traditional security filters (we blocked 1.4 million last year). And Business Email Compromise (BEC) and ransomware continue to evolve, the latter causing major outages across local government, healthcare and other vulnerable sectors.

            Organizations are often left flat-footed because they don’t have the in-house skills to secure a rapidly evolving IT environment. Mistakes get made, and configuration errors can allow the hackers to sneak in.

            Against this backdrop, CISOs need visibility, detection and response capabilities across the extended enterprise. But in too many cases, teams are struggling because they have:

            • Too many security tools, in silos. Security leaders want to consolidate the 10, 20 or even 50+ security technologies currently in use across their organizations. And ideally, they need capabilities that work seamlessly together, sharing threat intelligence across security layers, and delivering a fully connected threat defense.
            • Too few people. Global cybersecurity skills shortages have now exceeded four million, with existing teams often overwhelmed by alerts, allowing serious threats to fly under the radar
            • Increased compliance pressures. CISOs are under pressure to comply with a number of regulations, and the impacts of non-compliance are increasingly strict. While newer, more demanding compliance requirements like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act aim to protect data, they also present operational challenges for cloud teams with complex, manual and time consuming audits. Not to mention new regulations have teeth, with fines that can have a serious impact on the bottom line.  For example, as of March 2020, 227 GDPR fines had been levied, totalling over 466 million euros.

            Beyond the endpoint

            While endpoint detection and response (EDR) has become a popular response to some of these problems over recent years, the reality is that cyber-attacks are rarely straightforward and limited to the endpoint (as noted in the email statistic above). Security teams actually need visibility, detection, and response across the entire IT environment, so they can better contextualize and deal with threats.

            This is what Trend Micro XDR offers. It provides visibility across not just endpoints but also email, servers, cloud workloads and networks, applying AI and expert security analytics to correlate and identify potential threats. The result is fewer, higher fidelity alerts for stretched IT security teams to deal with. Recognizing the skills shortage reality, we also offer a managed XDR service that augments in-house SOC activities with the power of Trend Micro security experts.

            Detection and response is too important to be limited to the endpoint. Today’s CISOs need visibility, detection, and response everywhere.

            The post Why CISOs Are Demanding Detection and Response Everywhere appeared first on .

            Letter from the CEO: A time of kindness and compassion

            By Trend Micro

            Dear Customers,

            Together, we are facing a truly unprecedented situation and we have all had to adapt to the new reality. The global coronavirus pandemic is affecting our families, our communities, our organizations – indeed, it affects our perspective and way of life. As you certainly have too, at Trend Micro we have been busy over the past few weeks ensuring our employees are safe while also delivering uninterrupted service and protection for our customers. We have made it a priority to help organizations around the globe strengthen their security and ensure business continuity while so many of their employees work remotely.

            As a global company with headquarters in Japan, we have been exposed to COVID-19 from the very early days when it first erupted in Asia. We have seen the massive impact this novel coronavirus has had on all of us: from social distancing, to families being separated, illness and even death. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who has been impacted by the virus, directly or indirectly.

            The safety of our employees is our first priority and for the last few weeks the vast majority of our employees are all working from home – all 7,000 across 60 countries. It is heartwarming to see the different activities teams have launched to stay connected while being apart: virtual happy hours or morning coffee meetings, online sports classes to stay fit together, movie watching nights and even remote karaoke. I sometimes feel that we are more connected now than ever before.

            In the midst of these difficult times, we have also seen the amazing power of positivity and kindness around the world. I am very touched and proud of how our employees, our Trenders, are stepping up even more than usual to engage in acts of generosity and community support. A few examples include:

            • Employee-initiated neighborhood help services such as shopping for the elderly
            • Tools developed to help our medical heroes, for example a 3D printed clip that allows medical staff to wear face masks more comfortably
            • New content for students and parents who are now working from home, developed by our Internet Safety for Kids & Families team
            • Over 60,000 masks donated to our communities
            • Give & Match activities supporting underserved neighborhoods in India and the Philippines, with the company matching each employee donation.

            We have also seen Trenders donating some of their accrued paid vacation days to colleagues who might need additional time off to take care of family. There have been thousands of such acts of kindness – likely many more that I’m not even aware of. Knowing the passion of our employees, I know that there are new activities being organized and happening at this exact moment.

            In this same spirit, it is very important to me – as well as the entire executive team – that we do the right thing for our employees and our customers during these difficult times, rather than focusing solely on what’s best for our bottom line. We intend to retain all of our employees, and are working to ensure that our teams that work on commission will continue to have a steady income, no matter how business goes. We know that not every company is as fortunate as we are, and many family members of our employees are out of jobs, so our executives have also committed to reducing their salaries if necessary, to ensure that every employee will receive company bonuses for the first half of 2020. If we protect our Trend Micro family, our Trend Micro family can protect and care for their communities.

            I understand these times are difficult and while we are celebrating acts of kindness and positivity, many of our friends and families are struggling with health issues and other concerns. Our hearts go out to all those who are affected, to our healthcare workers and all essential employees who help keep our lives going. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

            Please stay safe – and stay at home!

            Kind regards,

            Eva Chen

             

            The post Letter from the CEO: A time of kindness and compassion appeared first on .

            Shift Well-Architecture Left. By Extension, Security Will Follow

            By Raphael Bottino, Solutions Architect

            A story on how Infrastructure as Code can be your ally on Well-Architecting and securing your Cloud environment

            By Raphael Bottino, Solutions Architect — first posted as a medium article
            Using Infrastructure as Code(IaC for short) is the norm in the Cloud. CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform, Serverless Framework, ARM… the options are endless! And they are so many just because IaC makes total sense! It allows Architects and DevOps engineers to version the application infrastructure as much as the developers are already versioning the code. So any bad change, no matter if on the application code or infrastructure, can be easily inspected or, even better, rolled back.

            For the rest of this article, let’s use CloudFormation as reference. And, if you are new to IaC, check how to create a new S3 bucket on AWS as code:

            Pretty simple, right? And you can easily create as many buckets as you need using the above template (if you plan to do so, remove the BucketName line, since names are globally unique on S3!). For sure, way simpler and less prone to human error than clicking a bunch of buttons on AWS console or running commands on CLI.

            Pretty simple, right? And you can easily create as many buckets as you need using the above template (if you plan to do so, remove the BucketName line, since names are globally unique on S3!). For sure, way simpler and less prone to human error than clicking a bunch of buttons on AWS console or running commands on CLI.

            Well, it’s not that simple…

            Although this is a functional and useful CloudFormation template, following correctly all its rules, it doesn’t follow the rules of something bigger and more important: The AWS Well-Architected Framework. This amazing tool is a set of whitepapers describing how to architect on top of AWS, from 5 different views, called Pillars: Security, Cost Optimization, Operational Excellence, Reliability and Performance Efficiency. As you can see from the pillar names, an architecture that follows it will be more secure, cheaper, easier to operate, more reliable and with better performance.

            Among others, this template will generate a S3 bucket that doesn’t have encryption enabled, doesn’t enforce said encryption and doesn’t log any kind of access to it–all recommended by the Well-Architected Framework. Even worse, these misconfigurations are really hard to catch in production and not visibly alerted by AWS. Even the great security tools provided by them such as Trusted Advisor or Security Hub won’t give an easy-to-spot list of buckets with those misconfigurations. Not for nothing Gartner states that 95% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault¹.

            The DevOps movement brought to the masses a methodology of failing fast, which is not exactly compatible with the above scenario where a failure many times is just found out whenever unencrypted data is leaked or the access log is required. The question is, then, how to improve it? Spoiler alert: the answer lies on the IaC itself 🙂

            Shifting Left

            Even before making sure a CloudFormation template is following AWS’ own best practices, the first obvious requirement is to make sure that the template is valid. A fantastic open-source tool called cfn-lint is made available by AWS on GitHub² and can be easily adopted on any CI/CD pipeline, failing the build if the template is not valid, saving precious time. To shorten the feedback loop even further and fail even faster, the same tool can be adopted on the developer IDE³ as an extension so the template can be validated as it is coded. Pretty cool, right? But it still doesn’t help us with the misconfiguration problem that we created with that really simple template in the beginning of this post.

            Conformity⁴ provides, among other capabilities, an API endpoint to scan CloudFormation templates against the Well-Architected Framework, and that’s exactly how I know that template is not adhering to its best practices. This API can be implemented on your pipeline, just like the cfn-lint. However, I wanted to move this check further left, just like the cfn-lint extension I mentioned before.

            The Cloud Conformity Template Scanner Extension

            With that challenge in mind, but also with the need for scanning my templates for misconfigurations fast myself, I came up with a Visual Studio Code extension that, leveraging Conformity’s API, allows the developer to scan the template as it is coded. The Extension can be found here⁵ or searching for “Conformity” on your IDE.

            After installing it, scanning a template is as easy as running a command on VS Code. Below it is running for our template example:

            This tool allows anyone to shift misconfiguration and compliance checking as left as possible, right on developers’ hands. To use the extension, you’ll need a Conformity API key. If you don’t have one and want to try it out, Conformity provides a 14-day free trial, no credit card required. If you like it but feels that this time period is not enough for you, let me know and I’ll try to make it available to you.

            But… What about my bucket template?

            Oh, by the way, if you are wondering how a S3 bucket CloudFormation template looks like when following the best practices, take a look:

               
            A Well-Architected bucket template

            Not as simple, right? That’s exactly why this kind of tool is really powerful, allowing developers to learn as they code and organizations to fail the deployment of any resource that goes against the AWS recommendations.

            References

            [1] https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/why-cloud-security-is-everyones-business

            [2] https://github.com/aws-cloudformation/cfn-python-lint

            [3] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=kddejong.vscode-cfn-lint

            [4] https://www.cloudconformity.com/

            [5] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=raphaelbottino.cc-template-scanner

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            Riding another wave of success for our multi-layered detection and response approach

            By Trend Micro

             

            The corporate endpoint is a constant battle between cybersecurity white hats and criminal attackers. According to one study from the Ponemon Institute, 68% of organizations were victims of an attack on the endpoint in 2019. The risks and costs associated with undetected threats are immeasurable. Organizations need to detect and respond immediately before any significant damage is done.

            In order to do this, CISOs must look beyond the endpoint to also include email, servers, cloud workloads and networks. This is the value of Trend Micro’s XDR platform. We heard feedback on this strategy recently, as Trend Micro was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Detection and Response, Q1 2020.

            Under fire and over-stretched

            Enterprise IT security teams are under unparalleled pressure. On one hand, they’re bombarded with cyber-attacks on a massive scale. Trend Micro detected and blocked over 52 billion such threats in 2019 alone. On the other hand, they’re facing a range of continuously evolving black hat tools and techniques including fileless malware, phishing, and supply chain attacks, that could lead to data theft and service outages. The stakes couldn’t be higher, thanks to an ever-tightening regulatory regime. All of this must be done with workforce challenges: the current cyber skills shortage for North American firms stands at nearly 500,000 workers.

            These are the kinds of challenges facing Trend Micro customer MedImpact Healthcare Systems, the largest privately held pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) in the US. Processing more than one million healthcare claims daily, MedImpact must protect two primary data centers, three call centers staffed 24/7, and multiple private network routing centers — all to the strict compliance requirements of HIPAA, PCI DSS and other regulations.

            As Frank Bunton, VP, CISO for MedImpact knows, effective endpoint detection and response (EDR) is vital to modern organizations. “EDR accelerates the threat analysis process so we can get to the solution faster,” says Bunton. “Speed to resolution is critical because we see attacks every day on just about every network.”

            But MedImpact is similar to a lot of other organizations today in that it also appreciates the need to go beyond the endpoint for critical cross-layer detection and response. “XDR gives us the added confidence that our organization is protected on all fronts. If an endpoint detects a problem, it automatically uploads the suspect object to a tool that analyzes that problem and fixes it. By the time we are aware of an issue, the issue is resolved. There is no way we could manage this much information without extended security automation,” says Bunton.

            The future is XDR

            This is where XDR comes in. It has been designed to look not just at endpoint detection and response, but also to collect and correlate data from across the organization, including: email, endpoint, servers, cloud workloads, and networks. With this enhanced context, and the power of our AI and expert security analytics, the platform is able to identify threats more easily and contain them more effectively.

            This matters to organizations like MedImpact, whose key challenge was “finding security solutions that could communicate with each other and share valuable data in real time.” XDR has visibility across the entire IT environment to detect earlier and with more confidence. It provides a single source of the truth and delivers fewer higher-fidelity alerts to enhance protection and maximize limited IT resources.

            But don’t just take our word for it. Forrester gave us a perfect score for product vision, security analytics, performance, market presence and much more. “Trend Micro has a forward-thinking approach and is an excellent choice for organizations wanting to centralize reporting and detection with XDR but have less capacity for proactively threat hunting,” the report concluded.

            To find out more… check out the Forrester report on leaders in this space.

            Learn more from MedImpact’s success story.

             

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            Tax Scams – Everything you need to know to keep your money and data safe

            By Trend Micro

            Tax season has always been a pretty nerve-wracking time for hard-working Americans. But over the years, technology advances have arrived to gradually make the process a bit easier. The bad news is that they can also introduce new cyber risks and even more stress.

            There are two things that cybercriminals are always on the hunt for: people’s identity data from their accounts, and their money. And during the tax-filing season both can be unwittingly exposed. Over the years, cybercriminals have adapted multiple tools and techniques to part taxpayers with their personal information and funds.

            Let’s take look at some of the main threats out there and what you can do to stay safe.

            What do they want?

            Cybercrime is a highly efficient money-making business. Some reports suggest this underground economy generates as much as $1.5 trillion each year. (See Into the Web of Profit, April 2018, McGuire, Bromium.) And tax-related scams are an increasingly popular way for the bad guys to drive-up profits. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claims that “thousands of people have lost millions of dollars and their personal information” to such attacks.

            The bottom line is that they’re after one of two things: to trick you into wiring funds to them, and/or to get hold of your personally identifiable information (PII), including bank account and Social Security Numbers (SSNs). This personal data can subsequently be used to defraud you or the IRS, or may be deployed in follow-on identity fraud schemes to capture illicit funds from you.

            There are various ways cyber-criminals can achieve these goals. The most common is by using social engineering tactics to trick taxpayers into sending money or personal information. But they might also use malware, either delivered to you personally or targeted at your tax preparer. This means you not only have to look after your own cybersecurity but also demand that the third-party businesses you work with store and transmit your sensitive information securely.

            Look out for these scams

            Here’s a round-up of the most popular tactics used by tax scammers today:

            Impersonation: The fraudster gets in touch pretending to be an IRS representative. This could be via email, phone, social media or even SMS. They usually claim you owe the IRS money in unpaid taxes or fines and demand a wire transfer, or funds from a prepaid debit card. Sometimes they may ask for personal and financial details—for example, by claiming you’re entitled to a large tax refund and they just need you to supply your bank account info.

            These interactions are usually pushy. The scammer knows the best way of making you pay up is by creating a sense of urgency and, sometimes, shaming the individual into believing they’ve been withholding tax payments. Phishing emails may look highly convincing, right down to the logo and sender domain, while phone callers will use fake names and badge numbers. Sometimes the scammers use personal data they may have stolen previously or bought on the Dark Web to make their communications seem more convincing.

            In some impersonation scams, the fraudsters may even pretend to work for charities and ask for personal details to help disaster victims with tax refund claims.

            Spoofing, phishing, and malware: In some cases, a text, email or social media message spoofed to appear as if sent from the IRS or your tax preparer actually contains malware. The scammers use the same tactics as above but trick the recipient into clicking on a malicious link or opening an attachment laden with malware. The covert download that follows could result in: theft of your personal information; your computer being completely hijacked by hackers via remote control software; or a ransomware download that locks your computer until you pay a fee.

            Fake tax returns: Another trick the scammers employ is to use stolen SSNs and other personal information to file tax returns on your behalf. They can then try to claim a large payment in tax refunds from the IRS. The PII they use to file in your name may have been taken from a third-party source without your knowledge, and the first you might hear of it is when you go to file a legitimate tax return. It can take months to resolve the problem.

            Attacks targeting tax preparers: Over half of Americans use third-party tax preparation companies to help them with their returns. However, this offers another opportunity for scammers to get hold of your sensitive information. In one recently discovered campaign, malware deployed on tax preparers’ websites was designed to download to the visitor’s computer as soon as they loaded the page. The IRS warns that businesses large and small are potentially at risk, as scammers are keen to get hold of tax information which enables them to file highly convincing fake returns in your name.

            What to do

            The good news is that by taking a few simple steps you can insulate yourself from the worst of these scams. Remember: the IRS does not contact taxpayers by email, text messages or social media to request personal/financial information— so if you receive communications that do, they are definitely a scam. It’s also important to remember that scams happen all year round, not just in the run-up to the tax filing deadline. That means, unfortunately, that you need to be on your guard all the time.

            Here are a few other recommendations:

            • Install anti-malware from a reputable provider to block phishing emails and websites and prevent malware downloads.
            • Be wary of any unsolicited messages purporting to come from your tax preparer or the IRS. Always contact them directly to check whether it’s a genuine communication or not.
            • Don’t click on any links in unsolicited emails, or download attachments.
            • Obtain an Identity Protection PIN from the IRS before filing your taxes. This will prevent fake returns being filed in your name.
            • Alert phishing@irs.gov about any unsolicited emails from IRS scammers.
            • Protect your log-ins with tax preparation companies. Switch on multi-factor authentication (MFA) if available, and/or use a password manager to make your logins hard to guess or crack.

            It also pays to demand that your tax preparer take their own precautions to keep your data secure. They should not be sending sensitive data or documents unencrypted in emails and must take steps on their own to combat phishing emails that target employees, since these can cascade to you during your tax preparation process. Whether hosted in the cloud or running on-premises, the servers that hold your data should also have adequate protection—and you have a right (and a duty to yourself) to ask ahead of time what they’re doing to protect it.

            According to the IRS tax preparers should put the following internal controls in place:

            • Install anti-malware on all web and storage servers and keep their software automatically updated.
            • Encourage the use of unique, strong passwords via a password manager for each account, and deploy multi-factor authentication technology for clients.
            • Encrypt all sensitive files and emails exchanged with strong password protections.
            • Back-up sensitive data regularly to a secure off-site source.
            • Wipe clean/destroy any old hard drives and printers containing sensitive data.
            • Limit access to taxpayer data to staff who need to know.

            How Trend Micro can help

            Trend Micro offers a range of security tools to help taxpayers keep their personal and financial information safe from fraudsters.

            Our flagship consumer solution Trend Micro Security (TMS) provides the following protections:

            • Protects against phishing links in emails that can take you to fraudulent sites. Its Fraud Buster feature for Gmail and Hotmail extends this to webmail.
            • Blocks malicious website downloads and scans for malware hidden in attachments.
            • Protects against ransomware and theft of sensitive data via Folder Shield.
            • Protects and manages strong, unique passwords with Password Manager, which is bundled with Trend Micro Maximum Security.

            To find out more, go to our Trend Micro Security website.

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            Celebrating Decades of Success with Microsoft at the Security 20/20 Awards

            By Sanjay Mehta

            Effective collaboration is key to the success of any organization. But perhaps none more so than those working towards the common goal of securing our connected world. That’s why Trend Micro has always been keen to reach out to industry partners in the security ecosystem, to help us collectively build a safer world and improve the level of protection we can offer our customers. As part of these efforts, we’ve worked closely with Microsoft for decades.

            Trend Micro is therefore doubly honored to be at the Microsoft Security 20/20 awards event in February, with nominations for two of the night’s most prestigious prizes.

            Better together

            No organization exists in a vacuum. The hi-tech, connectivity-rich nature of modern business is the source of its greatest power, but also one of its biggest weaknesses. Trend Micro’s mission from day one has been to make this environment as safe as possible for our customers. But we learned early on that to deliver on this vision, we had to collaborate. That’s why we work closely with the world’s top platform and technology providers — to offer protection that is seamless and optimized for these environments.

            As a Gold Application Development Partner we’ve worked for years with Microsoft to ensure our security is tightly integrated into its products, to offer protection for Azure, Windows and Office 365 customers — at the endpoint, on servers, for email and in the cloud. It’s all about simplified, optimized security designed to support business agility and growth.

            Innovating our way to success

            This is a vision that comes from the very top. For over three decades, our CEO and co-founder Eva Chen has been at the forefront of industry leading technology innovation and collaborative success at Trend Micro. Among other things during that time, we’ve released:

            • The world’s first hardware-based system lockdown technology (StationLock)
            • Innovative internet gateway virus protection (InterScan VirusWall)
            • The industry’s first two-hour virus response service-level agreement
            • The first integrated physical-virtual security offering, with agentless threat protection for virtualized desktops (VDI) and data centers (Deep Security)
            • The first ever mobile app reputation service (MARS)
            • AI-based writing-style analysis for protection from Business Email Compromise (Writing Style DNA)
            • Cross-layer detection and response for endpoint, email, servers, & network combined (XDR)
            • Broadest cloud security platform as a service (Cloud One)

            Two awards

            We’re delighted to have been singled out for two prestigious awards at the Microsoft Security 20/20 event, which will kick off RSA Conference this year:

            Customer Impact

            At Trend Micro, the customer is at the heart of everything we do. It’s the reason we have hundreds of researchers across 15 threat centers around the globe leading the fight against emerging black hat tools and techniques. It’s why we partner with leading technology providers like Microsoft. And it’s why the channel is so important for us.

            Industry Changemaker: Eva Chen

            It goes without saying that our CEO and co-founder is an inspirational figure within Trend Micro. Her vision and strong belief that our only real competition as cybersecurity vendors are the bad guys and that the industry needs to stand united against them to make the digital world a safer place, guides the over 6000 employees every day. But she’s also had a major impact on the industry at large, working tirelessly over the years to promote initiatives that have ultimately made our connected world more secure. It’s not an exaggeration to say that without Eva’s foresight and dedication, the cybersecurity industry would be a much poorer place.

            We’re all looking forward to the event, and for the start of 2020. As we enter a new decade, Trend Micro’s innovation and passion to make the digital world a safer place has never been more important.

             

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