The threat landscape is constantly shifting. Sometimes new attack techniques emerge, at other times attackers dust off old favorites to see if new holes have opened in their target’s defenses. It’s never the same two months in a row. One month there is a jump in new malware variants; another might see a spike in spear-phishing attacks. With a shifting environment such as this, it’s important to keep on top of the latest trends in attack techniques.
To that end, Symantec began publishing a monthly report over nine years ago, which started off by detailing the latest spam activity. As time passed the report expanded to cover other threat types, from phishing to malware, eventually becoming what is called the Symantec Intelligence Report. For many years, the Symantec Intelligence Report has been the most frequently published and comprehensive threat report available within the security industry, covering a wide range of threats and trends in the threat landscape.
This week we are launching a new web page on the Symantec website, taking our threat intelligence in a new and exciting direction. The Latest Intelligence page contains the charts, tables, and trends you’re used to finding in the Symantec Intelligence Report, along with some new features. Want to use something in a presentation? We now offer download options for each chart and table, in either .png or .jpeg format. We’ve also added social options so you can share individual charts through your favorite social media channels.
Figure. An example metric from the new Latest Intelligence page
This new web page will continue to pull data from Symantec’s Global Intelligence Network (GIN), which is one of the largest civilian threat intelligence networks in the world. It will remain the most comprehensive threat reporting in the security industry, leveraging the vast amount of threat data available through GIN.
For the launch of the Latest Intelligence page, we are picking up where we left off with the Symantec Intelligence Report and providing the latest data from December 2015. January will be ready to go next week, after which we will resume a monthly publishing schedule. However, thanks to some back-end streamlining, we will be able to release the latest data more quickly than with the Symantec Intelligence Report. We expect to have everything compiled, reviewed, and published within the first full week of the month, after which you’ll be able to review what’s happening out there.
The threat landscape can be a tricky scene to navigate. We hope that our new Latest Intelligence page helps make doing so just a little easier.