Avoid 911. And Get Some 411 On Cybersecurity

Fights among thieves. Twists in the plot. Change of Plan B to Plan C. The current, and upcoming, cybersecurity landscape looks no less thrilling and unpredictable than a good season of Money Heist. Let’s hear from Yihao Lim, Principal Intelligence Advisor at Mandiant Threat Intelligence and get a sense of what the attackers are after and where may they be hiding next.

- Pratima Harigunani

YIHAO LIM Principal Intelligence Advisor, Mandiant Threat Intelligence

As enterprises expand their perimeter—with hybrid work models, WFH formats as well as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Edge computing—what advice do you give to them about bolstering security?

Regardless of whether you own one of the impacted devices, Mandiant strongly recommends consumers and businesses with smart devices keep their devices and applications up to date. Consumers and businesses need to set aside time—at least once a month—to check if their smart devices have any updates to install.

Lastly, users of these devices should always create unique passwords for their devices.

How much should enterprises be worried of any domino effects on their corporate data and security because a lot of workers may still be working from home where these IoT devices are present?

This vulnerability would allow an attacker to communicate with an affected device, which may be located on a victim’s home network. While other devices on home networks would not be immediately impacted, the disclosed vulnerability would allow an attacker to establish a foothold within a victim’s network to stage additional attacks, targeting other devices on the same network as the victim’s device.

In your recent report on Security Predictions 2022, you raise an interesting trend of conflict between threat actors. Can you tell us more?