Conficker and Zeus malware won’t leave UK firms alone

Persistent malware, namely the Conficker and Zeus Trojans, are still a sizeable issue for a large number of companies in the country, says CERT-UK’s inaugural annual report.

Released in May, the report looks at  information provided by all 950 of CERT’s CiSP members. In the process, it discovered that malware that has been around for a long time remains the biggest issue for enterprise networks.

It also fired warnings regarding nation-state activity, as well as zero-day flaws such as Heartbleed.

The report found that, despite the fact that they have been active for four years, close to 50% of malware observed was Zeus. The report named both Conficker and Zeroaccess high on the list.

The report included the following on cyber crime at a state level:

“The threat from nation-states’ use of malware is still very real. We are under no illusion that the UK is a target and the cyber-sphere is a growing opportunity for those who would harm the economy. Industry and government need to work more closely than ever to combat the threat.”

There was a positive that came out of the report, in that the authors failed to note any malware threat prominent in specific sectors.

The only way that companies can protect themselves against the most serious malware variants is to ensure their IT security recruitment policy receives sufficient attention. Any business owner who reads CERT-UK’s report must surely be giving that particular area of their business some serious thought.