At this year’s WHD.global – the world’s biggest event for the hosting community – revered figures in the tech industry booked some stage time to discuss the latest trends, including ever-pressing matters like security.

Keen to hop on the WHD bandwagon with an eye on today’s networked world was none other than Eugene Kaspersky, the CEO of the namesake security company whose antivirus software runs on millions of computers worldwide.

The Russian malware crusader kicked off his video-streamed talk noting that traditional crime is moving into the cyberspace, while established cyber-criminals are getting much better at what they do. In short, malware is on the rise. Hardly a surprise since malware is always on the rise. The more interesting disclosures were yet to come.

Photo by Raj Eiamworakul on Unsplash

For proper safeguarding, get to know your enemies

Hosters like the big social networks aggregate tons of consumer data, which poses a major threat to privacy. Security from this standpoint is like a big jigsaw puzzle. Something along the lines of “we see the small pieces, but not the whole picture.” In addition to thwarting hackers, it’s also important to accurately estimate how many resources were poured into a given attack. This is homework material for security firms – it lets them manage their respective resources accordingly.

For those naive enough to assume that there will one day be a killswitch to all the malware in the world, Kaspersky said there’s no silver bullet in this industry: “just go with the flow and work on new threats.”

These days we use cloud services all the time. That goes for the telecommunications industry as well. We no longer store information just locally on enterprise premises, but also in the cloud. Providers do everything in their power to safeguard your data in the cloud, which includes making a backup for disaster discovery. But there is one more aspect enterprises should think about as well. Loosing such data doesn’t just mean a privacy breach, but also an IP breach in many cases, Kaspersky said. This is why enterprises need to have a razor-sharp focus on improving their security process.

When you’re hit, you’re hit. Pray first, then call in the troops

You will never know you’ve been breached unless the cybercrooks leave a breadcrumb trail, either through negligence or on purpose. Most of the times, it’s too late when you discover the breach, Kaspersky said. They are highly trained in doing bad things. And doing bad things is always easier than than safeguarding. Muffling an attack before it’s been deployed requires you to be at least one step ahead of the hacker, which is next to impossible. Kaspersky’s winning advice? Implement well-designed security processes and systems, follow them closely, and don’t hesitate to ask the experts to investigate day in and day out.

Strictly business speaking, Kaspersky tackled security matters from two standpoints: big and small. Perhaps not surprisingly, small businesses face small security threats, while the big players have to protect against infinitely bigger problems. He also noted that there’s a greater chance of having your software injected with malicious code than the software maker putting a backdoor (Trojan).

Other noteworthy tidbits from the information security specialist:

• Snowden’s disclosure was not news to Kaspersky Lab, but the scope of the government’s operations was.
• Limit access to enterprise data for BYOD employees and protect their devices, don’t use encryption for everything – be smart, not paranoid.
• And the icing on the cake: when you think there’s a security breach, first pray, then call in the experts.