Today, we’re pleased to announce the release of WatchGuard’s Internet Security Report for Q3 2017! Every quarter, WatchGuard’s Threat Lab looks forward to diving into Firebox Feed data from tens of thousands of live Firebox appliances across the globe to produce a report on the latest security threats cybercriminals are using against small to midsize businesses (SMBs) and distributed enterprises. In addition to analyses of the top computer and network threats from Q3, our latest report highlights useful defensive strategies companies of all sizes can use to protect themselves, an original research project on spear phishing attacks and much more!

Several of this report’s top findings include:

• Scripting threats account for 68 percent of all malware
• Overall malware instances jumped by a significant margin
• Cross-site Scripting (XSS) attacks plague web browsers and are continuing to spread
• Legacy antivirus solutions only missed 24 percent of new malware (an improvement from 47 percent in Q2)
• Suspicious HTML iframes are showing up in a big way, both in North America and abroad
• Authentication continues to be a major target for hackers

Overall, the findings from Q3 2017 reinforce our expectations that both new malware and attack techniques will continue to grow at a rapid pace in the months to come, which further accentuates the importance of education, layered security and advanced threat prevention solutions.

WatchGuard’s quarterly Internet Security Report is based on anonymised data from nearly 30,000 active WatchGuard UTM appliances worldwide. In Q3 2017, these devices blocked more than 19 million malware variants and 1.6 million network attacks. 

To download the complete report, click here.