Because all of these worms deliver their payloads disguised as file attachments to e-mail messages, the oldest advice remains the best. "First and most important -- and this is a social engineering aspect that's a little hard to master -- don't open or execute unexpected e-mail attachments," said Brian Foster, the product manager for Symantec's anti-virus group in a Web conference Wednesday.
That works, of course, but as the dramatic spread of some of these worms shows, not everyone heeds the advice. The problem is that worms hijack addresses from infected machines to propagate, leaving the next victim to believe that the message comes from someone he or she knows, and it, and its attachment, can be trusted.
Wrong.
"If you're not expecting an attachment from somebody, be wary of opening [it]," Foster said.
Another practice that can prevent infection is to block specific file types at the gateway, and/or set enterprise-wide policies on the e-mail clients deployed on workstations.
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
