Firmware Attacks Next Big Security Issue, just as most businesses are getting better at guarding against malware attacks. We still hear about successful attacks far too often, but companies undeniably are getting better at defending against them.
Unfortunately, this is not the same for firmware attacks, which are growing increasingly common.
In fact, according to the first-ever Security Signals report by Microsoft in March of 2021, fully 80 percent of the businesses report having been on the receiving end of a firmware attack in the last two years. However, less than one-third of surveyed companies have money in their IT budgets specifically earmarked to detect and prevent such attacks.
Worse still is the fact that State-sponsored hacking groups favor firmware attacks. They have funds and even better organized, and they tend to be much trickier to deal with than conventional malware attacks.
Put these various pieces together, and a disturbing picture begins to form. So many resources are keeping existing software patches up to date. Most of the rest aim to detect and prevent malicious software attacks, but little, if anything, is left-over to avoid attacks of the firmware. This action creates a tremendous weak spot in the IT Security armor surrounding most companies these days.
Given that hackers generally target the weakest links in any security system, that’s setting businesses across a wide range of industries up for failure. While the firmware is not currently the attack vector preference by most hackers worldwide, nothing prevents them from shifting gears any time they want to.
All that is to say, if you’re not currently paying much attention to firmware threats, you should probably start. If you don’t, you’re leaving yourself wide open to attack and unnecessarily vulnerable. It’s going to be a long year. Stay vigilant.
