According to Kaspersky Labs review of corporate threats, they included greater exploitation of legitimate software programs and malware being signed with valid digital signatures to keep malicious files hidden for longer. There was also a rise in the number of corporate users attacked by ransomware.
Kaspersky Labs experts found that in 2015 58% of corporate PCs were hit with at least one attempted malware infection, up three percentage points on 2014. One in three business computers were exposed at least once to an internet-based attack; with the exploitation of standard office applications seen three times as often as in consumer attacks.
Furthermore, 41% of business computers faced local threats, such as from infected USB sticks or other compromised removable media. The experts also noted a 7% increase in the share of exploits targeting the Android platform, confirming hackers growing interest in data stored on employees mobile devices.
In 2015, cyber-criminals and APT groups focused a great deal of attention on financial services organisations, such as banks, investment funds, and both stock and currency exchanges, including those handling cryptocurrencies.
Point-of-sale terminals, used by retailers and other consumer-facing organisations were another target for attack in 2015, with Kaspersky Lab products blocking more than 11,500 attempts to hack into PoS devices. The company knows of ten families of programs designed to steal data from PoS terminals, and seven of them appeared for the first time in 2015.
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