Shortcuts aren’t always the fastest or safest route from Point A to Point B. Providing faster “direct to cloud” access for your users to critical applications and cloud services can certainly improve productivity and reduce costs, but cutting corners on security can come with huge consequences. The Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) framework shows how to achieve digital transformation without compromising security, but organizations still face a number of difficult choices in how they go about it. Now, McAfee can help your organization take the shortest, fastest, and most secure path to SASE with its MVISION Unified Cloud Edge solution delivered alongside SD-WAN.

Decision makers seek a faster, more efficient high road to cloud and network transformation without compromising security. The need for speed and scalability is crucial, but corners cannot be cut when it comes to maintaining data and threat protection. Safety and security cannot be left behind in a cloud of transformation dust. This blog will look at the major trends driving SASE adoption, and will then discuss how a complete SASE deployment can deliver improved performance, superior threat & data security, lower complexity, and cost savings. We’ll then explain why fast AND secure cloud transformation requires an intelligent, hyperscale platform to accelerate SASE adoption.

Dangerous Detours, Potholes, and Roadblocks

While digital transformation promises substantial gains in productivity and efficiencies, the journey is littered with security and efficiency challenges that can detour your organization from its desired upgrades and safe destination.

Digital transformation challenges that must be addressed include:

• The Big Shift – Shifting your organization’s applications and data out of corporate data centers and into the cloud.
• Going More Mobile – The proliferation of mobile devices leaves your corporate resources more vulnerable as they are being accessed by a growing number of devices many of which are personally owned and unmanaged.
• Work from Anywhere– The seemingly permanent shift towards “Work from Home” creates an increased demand for more efficient distributed access to cloud-based corporate resources that secures visibility and control amidst the eroding traditional network.
• Costly Infrastructure – MPLS connections, VPN concentrators, and huge centralized network security infrastructure represent major investments with significant operational expense. The fact that multiple security solutions typically operate in distinct siloes compounds management effort and costs.
• Slow Performance, High Latency, and Low Productivity – Dedicated MPLS and VPN lines are also slow and architecturally inefficient, requiring all traffic to go to the data center for security and then all the way back out to internet resources – NOT a straight line.
• Data Vulnerability – Data resides and moves completely outside the scope of perimeter security through collaboration from the cloud to third parties, between cloud services, and access by unmanaged devices, leaving it prone to incidents without security teams knowing.
• Evolving Threats and Techniques – Staying ahead of the latest malware remains a priority, but many modern attacks are emerging that use techniques like social engineering to exploit the features of cloud providers and mimic user behavior with legitimate credentials. Detecting these seemingly legitimate behaviors is extremely difficult for traditional security tools.

Feel the Need for Safe, But Less Costly Speed

The increasingly difficult challenge of providing a fast and safe cloud environment to an increasingly distributed workforce has become a major detour in the drive to transform from traditional enterprise networks and local data centers. Companies have had to meet the challenge to “adapt or die” in connecting their employees and devices to corporate resources, but many have generally needed to choose between two unsatisfactory compromises: secure but slow and expensive, or fast and affordable but not secure. Adopting a SASE framework is the way to achieve all of the benefits of cloud transformation without compromise:

• Reduction in Cost and Complexity – A great benefit for your SOC and IT teams, SASE promotes a network transformation that simplifies your technology stack, reducing costs and complexity.
• Increased Speed and Productivity – Fast, uninterrupted access to applications and data boosts the user experience and improves productivity. SASE provides ubiquitous, low-latency connectivity for your workforce – even remote workers – via a fast and ubiquitous cloud service, and uses a streamlined “single pass” inspection model that ensures they aren’t bogged down by security.
• Multi-Vector Data Protection – SASE mandates the protection of data traveling through the internet, within the cloud, and moving cloud to cloud, enabling Zero Trust policy decisions at every control point.
• Comprehensive Threat Defense – A SASE framework fortifies an organization’s threat defense capabilities for detecting both cloud-native and advanced malware attacks within the cloud and from any web destination.

Selecting the Best Path to Transformation

When network and security decision makers come to the proverbial fork in the road to network transformation, what is the best path that enables fast and affordable access without leading to unacceptable security risk? A recent blog by McAfee detailed four architectural approaches based on the willingness to embrace new technologies and bring them together. After examining the pros and cons of these four paths, the ideal solution to achieve fast, secure, and cost-effective access to web and cloud resources is a SASE model that brings together a ubiquitous, tightly integrated security stack with a robust, direct-to-cloud SD-WAN integrated networking solution. This combination provides a secure network express lane to the cloud, cruising around the latency challenges of slow, expensive MPLS links for connectivity to your applications and resources.

MVISION Unified Cloud Edge (UCE) + SD-WAN: Fast, Furious and Secure

Fast Network. Data Protection. Threat Protection. Speed, security and safety turbocharged connectivity throughout a hyperscale cloud network without compromise.

MVISION UCE is the best framework for implementing a SASE architecture to accelerate digital transformation with cloud services, enabling cloud and internet access from any device while empowering ultimate workforce productivity. MVISION UCE brings SASE’s most important security technologies – Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Next-gen Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Data Loss Prevention (DLP), and Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) – together in a single cloud-native hyperscale service edge that delivers single-pass security inspection with ultra-low latency and 99.999% availability.

With MVISION Unified Cloud Edge and our SD-WAN integration partners, you can lead a network transformation that reduces costs and speeds up the user experience by using fast, affordable broadband connections instead of expensive MPLS.

MVISION UCE and SD-WAN transforms your network architecture by enabling users to directly access cloud resources without having to go back through their corporate network through MLPS or VPN connection. Now users can directly access cloud resources, and the McAfee cloud infrastructure is so well-optimized that they can often access resources even FASTER than if there was no intervening security stack! Read how Peering POPs make negative latency possible in this McAfee White Paper.

Because of the way we’ve delivered our product, MVISION UCE + SD-WAN unleashes SASE’s benefits, with data and threat protection that other vendors can’t match.

Reduction in Cost and Complexity, Increased Speed and Agility

• The resulting converged cloud service is substantially more efficient than building your own SASE by manually integrating separate cloud-based technologies
• Minimize inefficient traffic backhauling with intelligent, efficient, and secure direct-to-cloud access
• Protect remote sites via SD-WAN using industry standard Dynamic IPSec and GRE protocols leveraging SD-WAN technology that gets office sites to cloud resources faster and more directly than ever before
• Enjoy low latency and unlimited scalability with a global cloud footprint and cloud-native architecture that includes global Peering POPs (Point of Presence) reducing delays
• As a cloud service with 99.999% uptime (Maintained Service Availability) and internet speeds faster than a direct connection, you improve the productivity of your workforce while reducing the cost of your network infrastructure.

Multi-Vector Data Protection

• The McAfee approach to data protection is unified, meaning each control point works as part of a whole solution.
• All access points are covered using the same data loss prevention (DLP) engine, giving you an easily traceable path from device to cloud
• Your data classifications can be set once, and applied in policies that protect the endpoint, web traffic and any cloud interaction
• All incidents are centralized in one management console for a single view of your data protection practice, giving you a streamlined incident management experience

Comprehensive Threat Defense

• Intelligence-driven unified protection – CASB, Next-gen SWG, DLP – against the most sophisticated cyberattacks and data loss
• Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) protection from web-based threats and malware through the remote exclusion and containment of all browsing activities to a remote server hosted in the cloud
• The industry’s most effective in-line emulation sandbox, capable of removing zero-day malware at line speed
• User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) monitoring all cloud activity for anomalies and threats to your data

If you are looking for improved productivity and lower costs of cloud transformation without cutting corners, McAfee MVISION UCE offers the fastest route to SASE — without compromising your data and threat security.

Learn more about MVISION UCE and our unique approach to SASE here.

The post The Fastest Route to SASE appeared first on McAfee Blogs.

Attention Android Users: This Free VPN App Leaked the Data of 21 Million Users

To live our digital lives to the fullest, we rely on a variety of technologies to support our online activities. And while some apps and devices are meant to make certain tasks more convenient or provide us with greater security, others simply offer a false sense of security and could potentially lead to online misfortune. One such platform is SuperVPN. While users may applaud themselves for using a VPN to protect their privacy, this Android app is unfortunately spilling their secrets without their knowledge.

Let’s unpack how SuperVPN works and its recent involvement in a data breach.

SuperVPN or Super Villain?

VPNs (virtual private networks) are intended to create a secure tunnel between your device and the internet, offering you privacy and freedom from IP-based tracking. It protects your identity and financial information by encrypting, or scrambling, the data that flows through the tunnel, and can mask your true location, making it appear as though you are connecting from somewhere else. VPN apps have become much more popular in recent years as our awareness around privacy and security has grown. But, such is the case with all apps, it’s important to do your research before you select one to install on your phone.

According to Forbes, critical security warnings around the app SuperVPN surfaced last year. They reported research stating that 105 million people might have had their credit card details stolen, and that hackers could intercept messages between the user and provider. As of last Friday, someone leaked three databases on a popular hacking forum that purportedly contained user credentials and device data stolen from three different Android VPN services: SuperVPN, considered one of the most dangerous VPNs on Google Play with 100 million installs, GeckoVPN (10 million installs), and ChatVPN (50,000 installs). This breach exposed the data of 21 million users, including names, email addresses, usernames, payment data, device information, and even location data logs —  a major red flag for a VPN.

You Can’t Put a Price on Data Protection

Although a free VPN might seem like an ideal solution at first, there are multiple consequences that could potentially put your online safety in jeopardy. Since free VPNs are not making money directly from their users, many make revenue indirectly, through advertising. This means that not only will you be bombarded with ads, but you’re also exposed to tracking and malware. In fact, one study of 283 free VPN providers found that 72% included trackers. Beyond the frustration of ads, slowness, and upgrade prompts is the fact that some free VPN tools include malware that can put your sensitive information at risk. The same study found that 38% of the free VPN applications in the Google Play Store were found to have malware and some even stole the data off of users’ devices, similar to SuperVPN.

If you choose a verified, paid VPN service, however, you’ll enjoy a plethora of benefits including unlimited bandwidth, speedy performance, protection across multiple devices, and much more. Aside from choosing a premium VPN service, following these tips will help you stay secure against SuperVPN and others like it and protect your daily online communications:

1. If you have SuperVPN, uninstall it

Delete SuperVPN from your device as soon as possible. There are at least six other apps like SuperVPN, with identical descriptions and logos from different creators on Google Play Store. Steer clear of downloading these apps altogether to avoid any cyber misfortune.

2. Do your research

While some malicious apps do make it through the app store screening process, most attack downloads appear to stem from social media, fake ads, and other unofficial app sources. Before downloading an app to your device, do some quick research about the origin and developer.

3. Read app reviews with a critical eye

Reviews and rankings are still a suitable method of determining whether an app is legitimate. However, watch out for assessments that reuse repetitive or straightforward phrases, as this could be a sign of a fraudulent review.

4. Place a fraud alert

If you suspect that your data might have been compromised, place a fraud alert on your credit. This not only ensures that any new or recent requests undergo scrutiny, but also allows you to have extra copies of your credit report so you can check for suspicious activity.

5. Upgrade to holistic security for your peace of mind

A comprehensive security suite like McAfee Total Protection includes our McAfee® Safe Connect standalone VPN with auto-renewal and takes the worry out of connecting, so you can focus on what’s important to you.

Stay Updated

To stay updated on all things McAfee and on top of the latest consumer and mobile security threats, follow @McAfee_Home  on Twitter, subscribe to our email, listen to our podcast Hackable?, and ‘Like’ us on Facebook.

The post Attention Android Users: This Free VPN App Leaked the Data of 21 Million Users appeared first on McAfee Blogs.

At least 30,000 organizations across the United States — including a significant number of small businesses, towns, cities and local governments — have over the past few days been hacked by an unusually aggressive Chinese cyber espionage unit that’s focused on stealing email from victim organizations, multiple sources tell KrebsOnSecurity. The espionage group is exploiting four newly-discovered flaws in Microsoft Exchange Server email software, and has seeded hundreds of thousands of victim organizations worldwide with tools that give the attackers total, remote control over affected systems.

On March 2, Microsoft released emergency security updates to plug four security holes in Exchange Server versions 2013 through 2019 that hackers were actively using to siphon email communications from Internet-facing systems running Exchange.

In the three days since then, security experts say the same Chinese cyber espionage group has dramatically stepped up attacks on any vulnerable, unpatched Exchange servers worldwide.

In each incident, the intruders have left behind a “web shell,” an easy-to-use, password-protected hacking tool that can be accessed over the Internet from any browser. The web shell gives the attackers administrative access to the victim’s computer servers.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, two cybersecurity experts who’ve briefed U.S. national security advisors on the attack told KrebsOnSecurity the Chinese hacking group thought to be responsible has seized control over “hundreds of thousands” of Microsoft Exchange Servers worldwide — with each victim system representing approximately one organization that uses Exchange to process email.

Microsoft said the Exchange flaws are being targeted by a previously unidentified Chinese hacking crew it dubbed “Hafnium,” and said the group had been conducting targeted attacks on email systems used by a range of industry sectors, including infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks, and NGOs.

Microsoft’s initial advisory about the Exchange flaws credited Reston, Va. based Volexity for reporting the vulnerabilities. Volexity President Steven Adair said the company first saw attackers quietly exploiting the Exchange bugs on Jan. 6, 2021, a day when most of the world was glued to television coverage of the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

But Adair said that over the past few days the hacking group has shifted into high gear, moving quickly to scan the Internet for Exchange servers that weren’t yet protected by the security updates Microsoft released Tuesday.

“We’ve worked on dozens of cases so far where web shells were put on the victim system back on Feb. 28 [before Microsoft announced its patches], all the way up to today,” Adair said. “Even if you patched the same day Microsoft published its patches, there’s still a high chance there is a web shell on your server. The truth is, if you’re running Exchange and you haven’t patched this yet, there’s a very high chance that your organization is already compromised.”

Reached for comment, Microsoft said it is working closely with the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), other government agencies, and security companies, to ensure it is providing the best possible guidance and mitigation for its customers.

“The best protection is to apply updates as soon as possible across all impacted systems,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a written statement. “We continue to help customers by providing additional investigation and mitigation guidance. Impacted customers should contact our support teams for additional help and resources.”

Adair said he’s fielded dozens of calls today from state and local government agencies that have identified the backdoors in their Exchange servers and are pleading for help. The trouble is, patching the flaws only blocks the four different ways the hackers are using to get in. But it does nothing to undo the damage that may already have been done.

A tweet from Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, responding to a tweet from White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

By all accounts, rooting out these intruders is going to require an unprecedented and urgent nationwide clean-up effort. Adair and others say they’re worried that the longer it takes for victims to remove the backdoors, the more likely it is that the intruders will follow up by installing additional backdoors, and perhaps broadening the attack to include other portions of the victim’s network infrastructure.

Security researchers have published several tools for detecting vulnerable servers. One of those tools, a script from Microsoft’s Kevin Beaumont, helps companies identify exposed servers.

KrebsOnSecurity has seen portions of a victim list compiled by running such a tool, and it is not a pretty picture. The backdoor web shell is verifiably present on the networks of thousands of U.S. organizations, including banks, credit unions, non-profits, telecommunications providers, public utilities and police, fire and rescue units.

“It’s police departments, hospitals, tons of city and state governments and credit unions,” said one source who’s working closely with federal officials on the matter. “Just about everyone who’s running self-hosted Outlook Web Access and wasn’t patched as of a few days ago got hit with a zero-day attack.”

Another government cybersecurity expert who participated in a recent call with multiple stakeholders impacted by this hacking spree worries the cleanup effort required is going to be Herculean.

“On the call, many questions were from school districts or local governments that all need help,” the source said, speaking on condition they were not identified by name. “If these numbers are in the tens of thousands, how does incident response get done? There are just not enough incident response teams out there to do that quickly.”

When it released patches for the four Exchange Server flaws on Tuesday, Microsoft emphasized that the vulnerability did not affect customers running its Exchange Online service (Microsoft’s cloud-hosted email for businesses). But sources say the vast majority of the organizations victimized so far are running some form of Internet-facing Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) email systems in tandem with Exchange servers internally.

“It’s a question worth asking, what’s Microsoft’s recommendation going to be?,” the government cybersecurity expert said. “They’ll say ‘Patch, but it’s better to go to the cloud.’ But how are they securing their non-cloud products? Letting them wither on the vine.”

The government cybersecurity expert said this most recent round of attacks is uncharacteristic of the kinds of nation-state level hacking typically attributed to China, which tends to be fairly focused on compromising specific strategic targets.

“Its reckless,” the source said. “It seems out of character for Chinese state actors to be this indiscriminate.”

Microsoft has said the incursions by Hafnium on vulnerable Exchange servers are in no way connected to the separate SolarWinds-related attacks, in which a suspected Russian intelligence group installed backdoors in network management software used by more than 18,000 organizations.

“We continue to see no evidence that the actor behind SolarWinds discovered or exploited any vulnerability in Microsoft products and services,” the company said.

Nevertheless, the events of the past few days may well end up far eclipsing the damage done by the SolarWinds intruders.

This is a fast-moving story, and likely will be updated multiple times throughout the day. Stay tuned.

Update, 8:27 p.m. ET: Wired cybersecurity reporter Andy Greenberg has confirmed hearing the same number of victim numbers cited in this report: “It’s massive. Absolutely massive,” one former national security official with knowledge of the investigation told WIRED. “We’re talking thousands of servers compromised per hour, globally.” Read Greenberg’s account here.

Also, the first and former director of CISA, Chris Krebs (no relation) seems to be suggesting on Twitter that the victim numbers cited here are conservative (or just outdated already):

Update 8:49 p.m.: Included a link to one of the more recommended tools for finding systems vulnerable to this attack.

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