Response to Cyber Attack on Government and Public Institutions April 2017

On April 26, 2017, the Israeli National Cyber Authority (NCA) published it had thwarted a massive cyber-attack on Israeli businesses and infrastructure in recent days in an effort to hurt the Israeli economy. The NCA explained that the cyber-attack was based on sending posing emails in the name of the victim organization, and was targeted against 210 organizations, government ministries, public bodies, and private individuals, in a large-scale attempted strike on the Israeli economy.

The challenge is that any files that enter the internal sensitive network, via any medium, including via E-mails and especially via E-mails with attachments, can be infected with a wide range of threats. Examples of these threats include APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats), Trojans and Ransomware. These attacks, which are constantly updated, will easily bypass the systems in use within the organization like Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam filters, Mail Relays, Firewalls, Sandboxes and more.

Blocking Email based cyber-attacks such as this serious event can be achieved only by using a real deep Email content filtering system. Common use of Anti-Virus, Mail-Relay, Firewall and Sandbox are an insufficient response for Email based cyber-attacks.