Check Point to Focus on Securing the Home Network

Check Point Software Technologies announced plans to direct more of its resources to securing the home network. As part of it fourth quarter report, Chief Executive Gil Shwed, said the company saw growth in sales of its cloud, network and remote-access security products. The company said they see the hybrid home-office as the new normal, even with the roll out of vaccine for the COVID-19 pandemic.  Shwed said, the company would work to merge its technologies into a single product suite able to secure home and work computers as well as mobile phone networks.

Check Point said, there has been an increased in cyber-attacks targeting IOT networks at manufacturing plants, utilities and other mission critical environments. The new IoT Protect solution, recently released, was designed to secure IoT devices and networks against the most advanced cyber-attacks.  The solution delivers threat prevention and security management capabilities to block cyber-attacks at both IoT network and IoT device level, using threat intelligence and innovative IoT-specific security services.

A Check Point survey found that securing remote workers will be a leading priority and challenge for the next 2 years, as roughly half of organizations believe the workplace will not return to pre-pandemic norms. This they said tighten the security risk for organisations as more staff work remotely.

The Check Point Malware and Campaigns Research, said they have seen a continuous wave of Phishing attacks, one of the most popular attack approach is targeting online shoppers, specifically during the “Shopping season”, along with the following:

• Amazon Prime Day Research: Check Point conducted an analysis of cyber threats related to Amazon’s Prime Day, the annual online shopping event available to over 150 million Amazon Prime members.  Leading up to Amazon Prime day there was a sharp increase in the number of malicious domains registered containing the words “Amazon”, as well “Prime”.
• Phishing emails doubled in November in run-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday: Prior to the Black Friday shopping weekend, there was an 80% increase in malicious phishing campaigns targeting online shoppers in the form of “special offers”, and urge shoppers to be wary of “too good to be true” online bargains.
• Shipping and delivery-related phishing emails: In the month of November, there was a 440% global increase in shipping related phishing emails, compared to October. Hackers impersonated Amazon, DHL and FedEx, by sending “Track your Shipment” or “Delivery Issue” emails to trick holiday shoppers into giving up their personal details for financial fraud.