Wednesday, December 11, 2013

The end of a great year - 2013

Wow - can you believe another year is almost over? And what a great year it has been! We at Telspace Systems saw a great many turning points this year - both for our business and for the security industry at large.

In April, we had the successful opening of our EU offices, which took place alongside InfoSec Europe. In May, we were back on local shores in time for ITWeb’s Security Summit. In June, we moved to stylishly decorated new SA offices, personalised to our business vision and personality by Luca Designs. 

In July, our own Charlton Smith presented a very interesting talk on steganography, which was so well-received it even appeared in Cover magazine.

In September, we launched our first-ever Healthchecks service, catered towards smaller companies, or those with budgetary constraints. Finally, just last month, Telspace Systems introduced its Wireless Hacking 101 training course material revamp and began offering a brand new course, Ethical Hacking 101.

Furthermore, this year saw the addition of four new employees to the Telspace team, namely Adam Hollins as Project Manager, Rhys Mossom as Security Analyst, Dimitri Fousekis as Team Leader – Security Analysts as well as a new Senior Security Analyst & Business Development Manager. 

A huge thanks goes to the entire Telspace Systems Team for making this a year to remember. Without each of you working so hard as a family, we would not be where we are today. 
 
Looking back, 2013 was definitely a very successful and exciting year for the company and we thank all of our loyal customers and friends who shared it with us. From the whole team at Telspace Systems, happy holidays and all the best for the New Year!
 
To roundup the year, we have put together a list of the top 5 most prolific threats for 2013. Enjoy and stay safe.

1.  Botnets and DDOS
We saw many companies and government departments falling victim to DDOS attacks over the duration of 2013.

2.   BYOD Nightmares
Because of the explosion of “always-on” laptops, tablets and smartphones, sensitive and classified information on these devices are targets for exploitation.

3.   Web application security issues continue
Throughout 2013 we saw extensive issues in Web application security and attacks such as SQL injection are still very common. More complex, sophisticated attacks via Web applications are utilised to obtain confidential information such as company databases.

4.   Zero day browser attacks, Java zero-day attacks and other client side attacks
These types of attacks were a huge problem during 2013. Zero-day attacks have always been a massive risk to organisations, this year being a significantly bad year for many large organisations.

5.   Ransomware
Although ransomware is not a new attack vector, we saw a significant spike in the amount of ransomware this year. Today’s ransomware is usually conducted via poisoned Webpages, social engineering and various other methods.