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Do you know what BYOD, BYOA, BYOT are? No? You lack experience!

We apologize in advance for this extremely freaky reference: If in the well-known science fiction saga Foundation there was a duty to collect all the information of the galaxy to save it, at Pandora FMS we have assigned ourselves the task of making a glossary worthy enough with all the “What are” and the “What is” of technology. And today, without further delay or freakiness, it’s time to define the acronyms: BYOD, BYOA, BYOT.

* Warning to (very) lost sailors: This “Byo-” has NOTHING to do with that other prefix element, “Bio”. Thank you. Get back to your beloved diet

Do you already know what BYOD is? And BYOA? Nor what is BYOT?

BYOT (Bring your own technology)

That means indeed: “Bring your own tech from home, kid”. This is what BYOT means. A policy that allows employees to bring their own electronic devices, personal ones, from home to work.

This has advantages even if you don’t imagine it. And the top companies each give their distinctive approach to implementing such a policy. Some offer employees remuneration to purchase such technology. Other companies think better of it and expect their employees to put up with half or all of the expenses. Some even spend the money but then they demand for employees to pay for some services separately, such as phone service or data…

In any case, no matter how you buy your new devices or whoever pays for the Internet that month, if the device is connected to a corporate network, a highly professional IT department must secure and manage the device.

BYOD (Bring your own device)

Correct. You have translated well: “Use your own device from home, kid”. This term refers again, although on a different scale, to the tendency of employees to use personal devices to work and connect to their company’s networks, access their systems or relevant data.  You know what we mean when we talk about “personal devices”… your smartphone, your laptop, your tablet or, I don’t know, your 4-gigabyte USB.

The truth is that this rings a bell, companies, and especially since this terrible pandemic, now support teleworking. BYOD is here, more and more, working from home, maintaining a flexible schedule, including trips and urgent departures, in the middle of the morning, to get a Coke or to pick up your kid from school.

As it could not be otherwise, for the directives of your company the security of your BYOD is a crucial issue. Because for you it can be a whole morale boost, even on productivity, the fact of working with your trustworthy device, but if the IT department does not take care of checking it before, the access of your personal devices to the company network can raise serious security concerns.

The best thing in this case is to establish a policy where it is decided whether the IT department is going to protect personal devices and, if so, how it is going to determine the access levels. Approving types of devices, defining security policies and data ownership, calculating the levels of IT support granted to BYOD…  Then informing and educating employees on how to use their devices without ultimately compromising company data or networks. Those would be the steps to follow.

Studies show that there is higher productivity for employees using BYOD. Nothing less than a 16% increase in productivity in a normal workweek, for those who work forty hours. It also increases job satisfaction and the fact that new hires decide to stay through a flexible work arrangement. Employee efficiency is higher due to the comfort and confidence they have in their own devices. Technologies are integrated without the need to spend on new hardware, software licenses or device maintenance…

Everything looks wonderful, although there are also certain disadvantages as usual. Data breaches are more likely due to theft or loss of personal devices, as well as employee dismissal or departure. Mismanagement of firewalls or antivirus on devices by employees. Increased IT costs, and possible Internet failures.

BYOA (Bring your own application)

And what’s that? BYOA is basically the tendency of employees to use third-party applications and Cloud services at work.

As we know, mobile devices, owned by employees, have personal-use applications installed. However, they access these applications and different services through the corporate network. Well, this is the aforementioned BYOA.

There are benefits, of course. All those who may be listening to Spotify or using your own Google Drive without paying directly for the Internet. However, the higher the BYOA, like the higher BYOD and BYOT, the bigger the security holes in your organization. No one suffers more than a company’s IT department when it comes to thinking about how vulnerable corporate data can be. Especially when they are stored in the Cloud.

Conclusions

BYOT, BYOD, BYOA solutions are very efficient in the way an employee works. High morals, high practicity, and high productivity. However, well, they do pose certain cracks in the corporate network. Sensitive data and unsupported/unsecured personal devices, sometimes are not the best combination.

“BYO” products have advantages but they need a seasoned, conscious, proactive IT department, always protected by management policies of BYOT, BYOD, BYOA.

If you have to monitor more than 100 devices, you may also enjoy a FREE 30-day Pandora FMS Enterprise TRIAL. Installation in Cloud or On-Premise, you choose !! Get it here.


Last but not least, remember that if you have a reduced number of devices to monitor, you can use the Pandora FMS OpenSource version. Find more information here.


Do not hesitate to send us your questions. Pandora FMS team will be happy to help you!

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About PandoraFMS
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring system, capable of monitoring devices, infrastructures, applications, services and business processes.
Of course, one of the things that Pandora FMS can control is the hard disks of your computers.

A SCADAfence Update Regarding The Log4Shell Vulnerability

December 10, 2021, will always be remembered by the security community as the day when a highly critical zero‑day vulnerability was found in the very popular logging library for Java applications, log4j and identified as CVE-2021-44228. Not long after identified the name “Log4Shell” was coined for the exploit and every organization, no matter their size, including every security vendor, quickly rushed to mitigate the zero-day vulnerability within their applications. This patching marathon is still a work in process as we speak.  

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ESET Research: Latin American banking trojans spread to Europe at the height of activity

  • Latin American banking trojans are an ongoing, evolving threat and ESET has recently seen some of their biggest campaigns to date.
  • They target mainly Brazil, Spain, and Mexico.
  • Mekotio and Grandoreiro expanded to Europe, mainly targeting Spain but also Italy, France and Belgium.
  • There are at least eight different malware families still active.
  • In June this year, Spanish law enforcement arrested 16 people related to Mekotio and Grandoreiro.
  • The vast majority (90%) are distributed via spam.

 

BRATISLAVA, PRAGUE — December 15, 2021 — ESET Research is concluding today its blogpost series dedicated to demystifying Latin American banking trojans started in August 2019. Since then, it has covered the most active ones, namely Amavaldo, Casbaneiro,Mispadu, Guildma, Grandoreiro, Mekotio, Vadokrist, Ousaban and Numando. Latin American banking trojans share a lot of common characteristics and behavior. Altogether, ESET has identified a dozen different malware families, most of which remain active to this day. The most significant discovery during the course of this investigation is the expansion of Mekotio and Grandoreiro to Europe, mainly Spain. ESET researchers have also observed occasional small campaigns targeting Italy, France and Belgium. Since Latin American banking trojans expanded to Europe, they have been getting more attention from both researchers and police forces. In the last few months, ESET has seen some of their biggest campaigns to date.

ESET telemetry shows a surprisingly large increase in the reach of Ousaban, Grandoreiro and Casbaneiro in recent months, leading to the conclusion that the threat actors behind these malware families are determined to continue their nefarious actions against users in targeted countries.

The campaigns we see always come in waves and more than 90% of them are distributed through spam, usually leading to a ZIP archive or an MSI installer. One campaign usually lasts for a week at most.

“Brazil is still the most targeted country, followed by Spain and Mexico. Since 2020, Grandoreiro and Mekotio expanded to Europe – mainly Spain. What started as several minor campaigns, likely to test the new territory, evolved into something much bigger. In fact, in August and September 2021, Grandoreiro launched its largest campaign so far and it targeted Spain,” says ESET researcher Jakub Souček, who leads the investigation into Latin American banking trojans.

In June this year, Spanish law enforcement arrested 16 people related to Mekotio and Grandoreiro. In the report, police state that almost €300,000 were stolen and they were able to block the transfer of a total of €3.5 million. Correlating this arrest with Latin American banking trojan activity in Spain, Mekotio seems to have taken a much larger hit than Grandoreiro, leading ESET to believe that the arrested people were more connected to Mekotio. Even though Mekotio went very quiet for almost two months after the arrest, ESET continues to see new campaigns distributing Mekotio.

Latin American banking trojans used to change rapidly. In the early days of ESET’s tracking, some of them were adding to or modifying their core features even several times a month. Nowadays they still change very often, but the core seems to remain mostly untouched. Due to the partially stabilized development, we believe the operators are now focusing on improving distribution.

“Latin American banking trojans require a lot of conditions to attack successfully,” explains Souček. “Potential victims need to follow steps required to install the malware on their machines; they need to visit a targeted website and log into their accounts. On the other side, operators need to react to this situation by manually commanding the malware to display the fake pop-up window and take control of the victim’s machine.”

During the course of this research series, several Latin American banking trojans became inactive, namely, Krachulka, Lokorrito and Zumanek. ESET researchers also discovered Janeleiro, a new Latin American banking trojan. In the future, ESET expects we may see some of these banking trojans expanding to the Android platform.

For more technical details about these Latin American banking trojans, read the blogpost “The dirty dozen of Latin America: From Amavaldo to Zumanek” on WeLiveSecurity. Make sure to follow ESET Research on Twitter for the latest news from ESET Research.

 Top three countries most affected by Latin American banking trojans

Latin American banking trojan activity worldwide

About Version 2 Limited
Version 2 Digital is one of the most dynamic IT companies in Asia. The company distributes a wide range of IT products across various areas including cyber security, cloud, data protection, end points, infrastructures, system monitoring, storage, networking, business productivity and communication products.

Through an extensive network of channels, point of sales, resellers, and partnership companies, Version 2 offers quality products and services which are highly acclaimed in the market. Its customers cover a wide spectrum which include Global 1000 enterprises, regional listed companies, different vertical industries, public utilities, Government, a vast number of successful SMEs, and consumers in various Asian cities.

About ESET
For 30 years, ESET® has been developing industry-leading IT security software and services for businesses and consumers worldwide. With solutions ranging from endpoint security to encryption and two-factor authentication, ESET’s high-performing, easy-to-use products give individuals and businesses the peace of mind to enjoy the full potential of their technology. ESET unobtrusively protects and monitors 24/7, updating defenses in real time to keep users safe and businesses running without interruption. Evolving threats require an evolving IT security company. Backed by R&D facilities worldwide, ESET became the first IT security company to earn 100 Virus Bulletin VB100 awards, identifying every single “in-the-wild” malware without interruption since 2003.