GMV has been working for some years on the fight against Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). During this time it has developed and honed advanced capabilities in the integration and operation of advanced-malware mitigation technology. It has also analyzed security incidents in global organizations to help optimize their IT process and reduce the impact of attacks of this type.

GMV has therefore played a key part in the International Industrial Cybersecurity Congress, held this year for the fifth time and recording the same success in terms of contents and speakers. This congress is one of the main activities of the Industrial Cybersecurity Center (Centro de Ciberseguridad Industrial: CCI), as a benchmark event of the cybersecurity market and as a meeting point for swapping knowledge, experiences and relations among all cybersecurity stakeholders.

One of GMV’s cybersecurity experts, Enrique Martín Gómez, input the company’s experience and knowledge of cyberattacks targeted at critical infrastructure, giving a paper on Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) targeted at critical infrastructure. These attacks, complex and very advanced, are part of a long term plan to compromise strategic or economic targets of any type of organization. These activities are usually funded by mafias with economic aims or governments with strategic interests, which are increasingly difficult to detect and prosecute.

In the words of GMV’s cybersecurity specialist, Enrique Martín: “the infrastructure is not attacked physically but rather the IT systems and from any part of the planet. This poses a huge threat due to the lack of any borders in internet”. Technology does exist to mitigate the impact of APT-based cyberattacks, such as sandboxing techniques, which run the suspected malware in a virtual environment and observe its behavior. All this technology also needs to be backed up by proper threat intelligence shared by all systems and organizations in charge of the cybersecurity of any infrastructure. Companies using threat intelligence will be better prepared to detect, head off and defend themselves from their attackers. In sum, a solution that combines sandboxing technologies and threat intelligence will considerably boost protection against these new-generation APT-based cyberattacks.

By way of summary, Enrique Martín explained how security faults on critical infrastructure affect the everyday life of everyone. Advanced attacks pose a real threat to critical infrastructure security (with the energy sector bearing the brunt). He wound up his speech by mentioning technological solutions that safeguard this infrastructure from the dreaded advanced attacks.