Wondering what our readers were most interested in over the past year? Wonder no more! We've rounded up our most read articles of the year to save you time. Wrapping up the worldwide roller coaster that was 2020, we wish we were feeling a little more nostalgic. Covid-19 came in like a tornado and changed up our daily lives as we knew them. The security industry, accordingly, also had to change mindsets and processes to adjust to a new, distributed-access-focused reality.

The Best, according to you:

1. ThreatSTOP Free Open Source Analysis Tools Series

Coming in at #1 is our popular analysis tools series, a 7-part journey compiled by our Security Research team that teaches everything from discovering relevant indicators and performing the analysis, to finding enrichments and new IOCs. In the series, we also share recommendations for free open-source analysis tools and use cases completed by our team, showing how to utilize the various platforms and tools. Although this series wasn't even posted 2020, it continues to be read by analysts all over the globe every day. View our visitor favorite post - #2 on Threat Exchanges and IOC sharing - or read the whole series:

Part 1: Why use IOCs?

Part 2: Threat Exchanges and IOC Sharing

Part 3: Analyzing Threat Infrastructure

Part 4: Enrichments and Connecting the Dots

Part 5: Emotet Banking Trojan Use Case

Part 6: Guildma Information Stealer Use Case

Part 7: APT10 Use Case

You can also check out our analysis tools infographic for an overview on all 7 stages of the journey.  

 

2. Five Ways Attackers Can Hack Your Email Account

Email security has always been a hot topic, so no wonder that a post like this one has consistently held a high spot on our leaderboard. After examining thousands of security incidents, Verizon has revealed that 94% of computer malware arrives via email! In this post, we explain five different types of email attacks, and most importantly - how to protect yourself from them. Check out the blog post here.

 

3. Securing the At-Home Workforce

Up next are two of our posts on work from home security. This year started a revolution in the way we view physical workspaces, with the concept of large centralized offices seeming to fade as a "thing of the past". 88% of organizations having urged employees to work from home, at least part time, during the pandemic, and surveys show that 99% of remote workers prefer to continue working from home in the future.

If you want to find out how to secure yourself and/or your employees while working from home, check out our 10 Work From Home Security Tips post.

If you'd like to get an extended free trial of ThreatSTOP MyDNS protection, an exclusive offering during the pandemic to allow anyone who is interested to download our light-weight DNS resolver and protection product and work safely from home, check out our post about securing the at-home workforce. 

 

4. Botnets 101

Our security research team has done quite a lot of research on botnets over the past year. What was once a realm of information-stealing and DDoS-attack-deploying infected distributed networks is now a world of extremely advanced IoT and cryptomining botnets. And with telecommunications moving to 5G, these botnets could soon become 10X faster. To read about the most infamous botnets of the 21st century, check out our botnets infographic. Want to learn more about botnet architecture and attack types? Read our blog post on the topic.

 

5. Ransomware News ALL THE TIME

So ransomware has surged in the last decade, becoming one of the most malicious and costly threats both to small businesses and large, as well as to individual victims. Our news updates on the latest ransomware attacks have also gotten a lot of attention in the last year, with our post on higher education ransomware attacks deemed the most popular. In addition, many have taken interest in the Honda ransomware attack that took place during the summer. Last year we also released our awesome Ultimate Ransomware Guide, which follows the evolution of ransomware through infection tactics, important variants, trends, ransomware protection and more.

 

New Year - New You (with more security). We're here and ready to help you do this. Ready to try ThreatSTOP in your network? Want an expert-led demo to see how it works?

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