“By using a range of analytics including metrics based on how users interact with their devices, rather than relying purely on user credentials, such systems offer an alternative means of authenticating transactions and assessing risks.”
BioCatch is raising the alarm over a new kind of malware that doesn’t rely on computer files as its bases of operations.
Discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the “fileless” malware can reside in non-traditional IT architecture such as random access memory or the central part of an operating system. Such malware was initially found collecting the credentials of a major bank’s administrator credentials, and has since been found in at least 140 financial institutions around the world.
Such unconventional digital threats require a different kind of approach to security. As BioCatch notes in a blog post describing the matter, Kaspersky Lab researcher Kurt Baumgartner suggested to Wired magazine that security officers can detect such malware by focusing on aberrant behavior on their IT systems and networks — a strategy for which behavioral biometrics platforms like BioCatch are ideally suited. By using a range of analytics including metrics based on how users interact with their devices, rather than relying purely on user credentials, such systems offer an alternative means of authenticating transactions and assessing risks.
It’s a means of getting out of the “never-ending cyber arms race of new malware being released, followed by new anti-malware definitions,” as BioCatch puts it. And with new kinds of threats emerging in the digital space, it’s a countermeasure that is increasingly valuable.
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March 6, 2017 – by Alex Perala
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