RSA – stopping the attackers before they damage business

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

The Israeli branch of RSA is the fore front of the war against Cyber crimes.

“The risk now is very high as some countries  are trying to penetrate every company that does business that is related to thier intersts ” says Daniel Cohen head of business development online threats managed services in RSA.

He says that RSA Israel designs, develops and operates a unique suit of products and services (IPV) that combats Cyber Crime.  More than 300 million users worldwide are protected by RSA Israel.  As part of its Cyber Crime combatting  suite, RSA Israel operates a unique Anti Fraud Command Center (AFCC) which is a 24X7 operation that monitors every day more than 100 million entities to detect Phishing and Trojan attacks worldwide. Up to date, the AFCC shut down more than 700,000 attacks.  Part of the RSA Israel is the Risk Based Authentication products which are big data analytics/machine learning set of solutions that holds world record in mitigating  cyber crime while maintaining  low false positive. 

The RSA Anti-Fraud Command Centre (AFCC) offers unprecedented levels of insight and information about online fraud, and its findings have over the years generated a great deal of interest with media.  It is located in the city of Herzilya, near Tel Aviv, and is part of the EMC Israel Center of Excellence. The Anti-Fraud Command Centre (AFCC) is a 24×7 war-room that detects, tracks, blocks and shuts down phishing, pharming and Trojan attacks perpetrated by online fraudsters. An effective countermeasure against online fraud, the RSA Fraud Action team has shut down more than 160,000 illicit websites across 140 countries to date, protecting more than 320 organizations. Its fraud analysts shut down websites hosting online attacks, deploy countermeasures, and conduct extensive forensic work to help catch fraudsters and prevent future threats – significantly reducing the average lifetime of an online attack. As of 2012, the AFCC has stopped 750,000 phishing attacks.

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The AFCC works to identify new forms of fraud and prevent activity in this area. Each month these reports focus on security trends, which countries have been worst hit and which types of fraud are most ‘popular’. The AFCC’s front-line team produces a lot of work around the latest fraud threats emerging from international gangs of cyber-criminals. This includes Citadel, the latest variant of Zeus, which brings to Trojans the levels of sophistication, usability and support usually seen in the legitimate software industry.

The AFCC is also able to illustrate how the fraud ‘underground’ operates, taking you through all the major players and demonstrating how it has developed to a full marketplace offering ‘fraud-as-a-service’. At the centre you will learn how AFCC staff infiltrates the underground to learn about and combat the wide array of threats coming from it.

Daniel and his team are responsible for reporting on intelligence findings recovered from the fraud underground, malware developments and phishing trends. This intersection of data – human-based intelligence, malware research and phishing trends – provides Daniel with unique visibility into the ever-changing cyber-fraud landscape. With his Business Development cap on, Daniel is responsible for implementing the short- and long-term business strategies for the group.

Cohen explains that penetrating the computer system of a company is in many cases very easy “You receive an e-mail , you open it and the attacker is in” he says.

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He reveals that RSA manages to stop some 90 % of fraud attacks “less than one percent causes the stop of business in the attacked company”

Cohen explains that RSA has developed the means to identify the attempt to penetrate from the less likely “hole”

“We don’t stop any attacks automatically because that will signal the attacker to look immediately for another weak spot”.