SonicWall Charts COVID-19’s Impact on Security Landscape

Though there’s no shortage of present-day threats to fret over, SonicWall experts worry about future ones as well. For example, Dmitriy Ayrapetov, SonicWall’s vice president of platform architecture, loses sleep over so-called “supply chain attacks,” in which hackers compromise software or hardware during the development process, before would-be victims have even installed it. Imagine someone inserting a back door into a line-of-business solution used by banks, for instance. 

“I’m downloading malware through a trusted channel,” Ayrapetov says. “I don’t even have defenses there. I trust this stuff.”

Conner, for his part, is concerned about the “common vulnerabilities and exposures”, or CVE, entries Intel has been filing in response to Meltdown, SPOILER, and other weaknesses in its processors. It’s great that the chipmaker has been distributing more information about those dangers, he says. “The problem is the bad guys take CVEs and reverse engineer them.” 

And that, furthermore, is just one of the problems potentially looming in our virus-laden, recession-burdened future. “I think we’re in for a very tumultuous next six to 12 months,” Conner says.