The IT Nerd

Trend Micro today announced that it is launching the new Trend Micro Cyber Academy  this month, giving teachers and parents a powerful tool to improve children’s safety and awareness online. As part of the Internet Safety for Kids and Families education program, the Cyber Academy will offer a series of video-based lessons and learning materials designed to improve children’s digital literacy skills in a way that’s meaningful and engaging.

According to research from early 2021, children have doubled their screen time during the pandemic, and are more likely than ever to be exposed to online threats such as exposure to adult content, phishing, and scams. Digital literacy skills are crucial to helping children avoid risks to their privacy and security and learn how to identify what is trustworthy or not online.  At the same time, the internet provides great opportunities for children and 63% of parents believe the internet has been beneficial to their children’s social and emotional well-being.  Digital literacy skills helps children realize the benefits of technology while also keeping it safe and positive for them.  

Aimed at children 7–10-years-old, the Cyber Academy will initially consist of five internet safety lessons that focus on passwords, two-factor authentication, security, privacy and healthy habits. The lessons can be delivered on-demand by a teacher in the classroom or a guardian at home in just 10–15 minutes and are offered completely free of charge. Future lessons which to be released in the coming months will cover topics such as cyberbullying, media literacy skills and managing screen time.  The lessons will be also available in additional languages over the coming months including Spanish, French, and Mandarin.

Each lesson consists of:

• A three-minute animated video
• A conversation guide with Questions & Answers for kids
• A Kahoot! Quiz to reinforce learning 
• A downloadable activity sheet as homework
• Further resources for parents, guardians and teachers

For more than a decade, Trend Micro’s Internet Safety for Kids & Families initiative has been working to address the often-neglected cybersecurity imperative of educating kids on how to be safe and responsible in their digital lives. As the challenge has become even more urgent during the Covid-19 pandemic, the company is committed to improving child safety and awareness in cyberspace. 

Trend Micro today announced the launch of its Trend Micro Cloud One regional data center service hosted in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Canada (Central) Region, to uphold data residency, safeguard data privacy and reduce business risk for Canadian organizations.

Owing to the agility that cloud brings, organizations are increasingly embracing it, making SaaS the preferred model for security solutions delivery. However, many customers face regulatory or policy-based concerns around the location of SaaS platforms or data storage for their workloads. Having a cloud data center within the country improves compliance and reduces friction for guidance and reporting requirements.

Trend Micro Cloud One is the company’s flagship cloud security services platform for protecting servers, resources, and applications in the cloud. The general availability announcement of the data center service in AWS Canada is part of Trend Micro’s commitment to supporting the business priorities of their customers.

Trend Micro chooses October as the launch date to raise awareness for Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The all-in-one platform approach provides automated protection, which will protect Trend Micro’s customers throughout their cloud journey. Data residency and sovereignty concerns are no longer a roadblock for enterprises to leverage the company’s market-leading platform.  

Trend Micro today revealed findings from its global survey on the resilience of Security Operations Centers (SOCs) as they continue to encounter a rising number of cybersecurity threats to their businesses.

The global survey polled IT specialists in 21 countries and included 101 Canadian IT security decision-makers in their findings. Overall, study results found that just under half (46%) of SOC/IT security teams were overwhelmed by security alerts. Additionally, almost three-quarters (71%) of respondents reported being negatively impacted emotionally by their work managing cybersecurity threats and alerts. This includes almost half (43%) reporting they felt so stressed at work they were unable to relax.

The survey also found that more than half (52%) of Canadian respondents were not highly confident about their organization’s ability to prioritize and respond to security alerts. This, despite companies surveyed reporting having an average of 23 security monitoring solutions in place to deal with ongoing threats. Furthermore, when it came to security infrastructure already in place, 2 in 5 companies (41%) admit to not using their existing systems. Reasons for not using their systems included them being out of date (46%), a lack of integration (41%), and difficulties around using it (31%).

Other topline Canadian findings include:

• 65% of companies surveyed are either expecting or already dealing with a data breach.
• 82% of companies surveyed have a security operations centre (SOC).
• Just under half of SOC/IT security teams operate 24/7 (45%).
• On average 25% of time is spent investigating false alert positives.

Trend Micro Vision One is the company’s answer to the struggles of SOC teams. Prioritized, correlated alerts using data from the entire IT environment help teams spend their time more wisely. Fewer alerts and stronger intelligence allow teams to regain balance in their work life and ease the emotional toll of security.

To find out more, please read the accompanying report.

Research methodology

The study is based on interviews with 2,303 IT security decision makers in 21 countries. This includes leaders who run SOC teams (85%) and those who manage SecOps from within their IT security team (15%). All respondents came from 250+ employee companies.

Trend Micro Incorporated and Carleton University have partnered to support more women pursuing careers in STEM through the Women in Engineering and Information Technology (WiE&IT) Program, launching this September. As one of the first sponsored programs of its kind in Canada, it aims to close the gender gap in STEM careers by providing women undergraduate and graduate-level students access to tools, knowledge, and resources for a successful transition into the workforce.  

As an organization that prioritizes learning and encourages employees to grow and take risks, Trend Micro proudly supports the university’s vision for the WiE&IT Program. This vision focuses on increasing awareness of women role models and providing young women with the tools and knowledge for a successful transition into the workforce.

Currently, less than twenty-five per cent of the entire Canadian STEM workforce is female. This program will create mentorship opportunities, host events for women students to build relationships with industry and government partners and provide a special fund to support allies at Carleton in meeting their equity, diversity and inclusion goals.

The program launches this school year at the beginning of September and will be virtual.  

Trend Micro Incorporated today revealed that the risk of cyber attacks has increased in the last year. According to a new survey, 80% of global organizations report they are likely to experience a data breach that impacts customer data in the next 12 months.

The findings come from Trend Micro’s biannual Cyber Risk Index (CRI) report, which measures the gap between respondents’ cybersecurity preparedness versus their likelihood of being attacked. In the first half of 2021 the CRI surveyed more than 3,600 businesses of all sizes and industries across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.

Read a full copy of the report, produced by the Ponemon Institute, here:https://www.trendmicro.com/cyberrisk.

The CRI is based on a numerical scale of -10 to 10, with -10 representing the highest level of risk. The current global index stands at -0.42, a slight increase on last year which indicates an “elevated” risk.

Organizations ranked the top three negative consequences of an attack as customer churn, lost IP and critical infrastructure damage/disruption.

Key findings from the report include:

• 86% said it was somewhat to very likely that they’d suffer serious cyber-attacks in the next 12 months, compared to 83% last time
• 24% suffered 7+ cyber attacks that infiltrated networks/systems, versus 23% in the previous report.
• 21% had 7+ breaches of information assets, versus 19% in the previous report.
• 20% of respondents said they’d suffered 7+ breaches of customer data over the past year, up from 17% in the last report.

Among the top two infrastructure risks was cloud computing. Global organizations gave it a  6.77, ranking it as an elevated risk on the index’s 10-point scale. Many respondents admitted they spend “considerable resources” managing third party risks like cloud providers.

The top cyber risks highlighted in the report were as follows:

• Man-in-the-middle attacks 
• Ransomware 
• Phishing and social engineering
• Fileless attack
• Botnets

The top security risks to infrastructure remain the same as last year, and include organizational misalignment and complexity, as well as cloud computing infrastructure and providers. In addition, respondents identified customer turnover, lost intellectual property and disruption or damages to critical infrastructure as key operational risks for organizations globally.

The main challenges for cybersecurity preparedness include limitations for security leaders who lack the authority and resources to achieve a strong security posture, as well as organizations struggling to enable security technologies that are sufficient to protect their data assets and IT infrastructure.

Trend Micro today released new research that reveals a major gap in security capability among mobile operators, which in many cases is not yet being filled by industry partnerships.

In the 5G era, and a rapidly changing digital landscape, operators could broaden their security credentials with partners as they look to deliver on their desire to secure private networks.

Learn more about the research during Mobile World Congress with Trend Micro’s Ed Cabrera: https://www.mwcbarcelona.com/agenda/session/enabling-digital-transformation-of-industries-in-the-5g-era.

According to the study, 68% of operators sell private wireless networks to enterprise customers with the rest planning to do so by 2025. Nearly half (45%) of operators consider it extremely important to invest in security to achieve long-term enterprise revenue goals. To this end, 77% of operators are planning to offer security as part of their private network solutions.

In addition, the report found that:

• 51% of operators see edge computing (Multi-Access Edge Computing, or MEC) is a key part of their near future enterprise strategy. Only 18% of operators currently secure their endpoints or edge.
• 48% of operators cite a lack of adequate knowledge or tools to discover vulnerabilities as a top 5G security challenge.
• 39% have a limited pool of security experts.
• 41% struggle with network virtualization vulnerabilities.

The role operators can play in securing the private network ecosystem is particularly important in the 5G Era. New threat vectors will materialize as enterprises look to embrace new communications technologies (5G, edge computing, cloud computing, private wireless, IoT) to digitally transform their business. Operators are in a prime position to address these and profit in supporting their enterprise customers. To take on this role, operators will want to broaden their credentials or partner with security, cloud or IT vendors capable of filling any gaps in their security portfolios and expertise.

As a security platformer with 5G service providers for Enterprise, Trend Micro understand the needs of its corporate customers and partners with these organizations to best meet those needs.

To read a full copy of the report, Securing 5G Era Private networks, please visit: https://data.gsmaintelligence.com/research/research/research-2021/securing-private-networks-in-the-5G-era.

The report is based on two GSMA Intelligence surveys:

• GSMA Intelligence Operators in Focus 2021 survey spans 100 decision-makers from operators around the world to understand their views on the enterprise opportunity.
• The GSMA Intelligence Enterprise in Focus 2020 survey spans 2,873 companies in eight industry verticals and 18 countries.

Trend Micro Incorporated today released results from a new study that reveals SOC and IT security teams are suffering from high levels of stress outside of the working day—with alert overload a prime culprit.

According to the study, which polled 2,303 IT security and SOC decision makers across companies of all sizes and verticals, 101 of those were Canadian, 70 per cent of global respondents say their home lives are being emotionally impacted by their work managing IT threat alerts. Nearly half (46 per cent) of Canadian SOT/IT security teams are overwhelmed by the volume of security alerts and 52 per cent admit that they aren’t entirely confident in their ability to prioritize and respond to them. It’s no wonder therefore that teams are spending as much as 25% of their time dealing with false positives.

These finding are corroborated by a recent Forrester study, which found that “security teams are heavily understaffed when it comes to incident response, even as they face more attacks. Security operations centers (SOCs) need a more-effective method of detection and response; thus, XDR takes a dramatically different approach to other tools on the market today.”

Outside of work, the high volumes of alerts leave many Canadian SOC managers unable to switch off or relax, and irritable with friends and family. Inside work, they cause individuals to turn off alerts (30% do so occasionally or frequently), walk away from their computer (46%), hope another team member will step in (46%), or ignore what is coming in entirely (36%).

With a staggering 65% of Canadian respondents, and 74% globally, already dealing with a breach or expecting one within the year, and the estimated average cost per breach USD$235,000, the consequences of such actions could be disastrous.

Trend Micro Vision One is the company’s answer to the struggles of SOC teams. Prioritized, correlated alerts using data from the entire IT environment help teams spend their time more wisely. Fewer alerts and stronger intelligence allow teams to regain balance in their work life and ease the emotional toll of security.

Research methodology

The survey was conducted among 2303 IT security decision makers in 21 regions. In Canada, 101 IT security decision makers were surveyed through online interviews by Sapio Research in April 2020 using an email invitation and an online survey. At an overall level results are accurate to ± 9.8% at 95% confidence limits assuming a result of 50%.

Trend Micro Incorporated today launched a new, co-built SaaS solution with Snyk, the leader in cloud native application security. The first of its kind, it’s designed to provide continuous insight into open source vulnerabilities for enhanced risk management to drive data-driven decisions.

Trend Micro Cloud One – Open Source Security by Snyk is the newest Cloud One service and the first partner addition to the platform, which is available through the channel as well as AWS Marketplace. 

To find out more visit: https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/business/products/hybrid-cloud/cloud-one-open-source-security-by-snyk.html

This is the first service that provides visibility into open source software vulnerabilities for security operation teams. The use of these open source code components is exploding thanks to the speed, flexibility, extensibility and quality they offer application development teams. According to Snyk, 80% of application code today is open source.

In their Market Guide for Software Composition Analysis, Gartner stated that “Open-source software is used in nearly all organizations. This introduces risks from readily exploitable vulnerabilities; an expanded attack surface through which malware and malicious code can gain access, compromising proprietary code and infrastructure; and legal and intellectual property exposures.”

Snyk has observed 2.5x growth in open source vulnerabilities over the past three years making it more necessary than ever to deliver security further into the DevOps pipeline. However, process gaps, mismatched toolsets and communication challenges between SecOps and DevOps are commonplace. Too often, this means security practitioners face an uphill battle and lack visibility into application build-time risks. This cloud service from Trend Micro and Snyk bridges the long-standing cultural challenges between security and development teams with a unified solution that delivers unique visibility sooner in the software development lifecycle to further protect the stack.

Almost all applications developed across the world in the last 25 years have been built using open source code. As the pressure to build and deliver new cloud-native applications continues to increase, organizations often lose sight of older applications, their component inventories, and maintenance and update cycles—creating further opacity and risk.

Trend Micro Cloud One – Open Source Security by Snyk also enables SecOps to identify vulnerabilities and issues related to licensing. This empowers security teams to better monitor, prioritize and communicate risk and exposure rates within DevOps projects over time. This happens with: 

• Data-driven security decisions
• Continuous monitoring of threat levels
• Effective prioritization of risks and remediation recommendations

Built-in automation also helps security teams quickly identify and gain awareness of indirect open source dependencies that both security and developer teams may not be aware exist in their applications. Approximately eight hours can be saved per vulnerability through automation and early discovery.

The service is available along with the entire Cloud One platform on AWS Marketplace. 

For more information and to get started with Snyk for free today, visit https://snyk.io.

Trend Micro Incorporated today announced a major refresh of the Trend Micro partner program that provide more cloud services resources and rewards partners with additional discounts for enabling organizations to better secure public cloud computing environments.

The objective of the revamped program is to make it more profitable for partners that work with customers to deploy best-in-class Trend Micro cloud security services via our authorized distributors and the AWS Marketplace or the AWS Consulting Partner Private Offer(CPPO) program, through which many cloud-native partners already resell AWS services.

Digital transformation has surged over the past year as organizations shift workloads to the cloud to support remote working, optimize business processes and drive innovative business strategies to engage customers. Channel partners supporting these organizations need a cybersecurity partner they can trust to help them secure a wide range of application environments with confidence.

The cornerstones of the cloud-first partner program are:

• A cloud-first focus on partners that provide cloud services, such as AWS Consulting Partners or those who have achieved AWS Well-Architected Review (WAR) competencies that assure high-quality security services are implemented in accordance with best practices defined by AWS. The new program offers partners service-oriented pre-sales support, co-selling tools, and free access to Trend Micro’s cloud security posture management solution, Cloud One – Conformity, that can accelerate and automate well-architected security assessments.
• Increased deal registration discounts to protect margins for partners who register opportunities and actively work with us to bring customer success.
• Cloud marketplace bundles and security services enablement: Trend Micro’s cloud-first program and new enablement platforms will enable partners to build their cloud service bundles and grow their businesses more profitably on the AWS Marketplace. Our partners are entitled to full use of our new white-label cybersecurity assessment services, cloud risk assessment tool, and can enroll in the Trend Micro professional service partner program.
• Early Warning Services: The Trend Micro Vision One platform allows Trend Micro’s Incident & Response teams to proactively provide joint customers with threat intelligence and risks through daily scanning for indicators of compromise (IoC) related to notable targeted attacks. It opens a path for partners to build their services to help customers respond to and mitigate threats quickly and efficiently. 
• Commitment to simplicity and flexibility that shifts compensation from a tier-based standard discount model to a flat standard discount for all partner types. 

Trend Micro’s channel strategy has been recognized with multiple accolades including four separate achievements just this year from CRN including a 5-star rating in its 2021 partner program guide, recognitions on the Top 100 Coolest Cloud Companies list and Top 100 Security Companies list. In addition, the company was named as a Champion in the Canalys Global Cybersecurity Leadership Matrix for 2020 for the increased investment in its channel-first strategy to help partners drive SaaS business across its portfolio.

For more information about the Trend Micro partner program and partnership opportunities, please visit: https://www.trendmicro.com/en_ca/partners/channel-partners/professional-services-partner.html

Trend Micro Incorporated today announced that Canada accounted for 153,584 of total COVID-themed cyber-threat detections last year, placing it in the list of Top 20 countries at the eighteenth spot.

Globally, the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network (SPN) detected nearly 16.4 million threats, consisting of malicious URLs, spam, and malware, over the course of 2020. The vast majority of these (88%) were email-borne spam threats. Examples of this include phishing attempts using COVID-19 as a lure in an attempt to steal personal and financial information.

Canada ranked ahead of Croatia and Turkey on the list of Top 20 countries, and behind Uruguay. The United States has the highest amount of COVID-themed cyber-threat detections with over 6 million. 

In total, Trend Micro blocked over 62.6 billion cyber-threats in 2020, a 20% year-on-year increase. Attacks on home networks globally surged 209% to reach nearly 2.9 billion as cyber-criminals adapted quickly to the mass shift to distributed working caused by the pandemic.

Trend Micro’s 2020 Security Roundup report also revealed the detection of over 175 million phishing URLs during 2020 as attackers sought to target distracted home workers using potentially unsecured devices and networks.

To read the full report, please visit this link.