Advanced Persistent Threats 'absolutely exist' says Palo Alto Networks

'This kind of thing is happening all the time now' says systems engineering manager Sherlow

Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) are real and "absolutely exist", and should not be dismissed as sales hype, according to firewall firm Palo Alto Networks.

Speaking at Computing's Enterprise Security and Risk Management 2014 summit today, Palo Alto Networks systems engineering manager James Sherlow said that it is important not to confuse APTs with zero-day malware attacks.

"There's a difference between APTs and zero-day malware," he asserted.

"We talk sometimes about the two getting crossed over. [At Palo Alto] we analyse something like 300,000 files a day, of which roughly 30 per cent is zero-day malware.

"But APTs absolutely exist and we do see them."

Sherlow suggested that keeping an eye on correlated invasions of a network is particularly important to pick up APTs, as well as threats "hiding in plain sight - hiding under the radar".

"We're all zooming in on web and email, but there's this free gate traffic in the corner nobody is looking at," stated Sherlow, remarking that, in Palo Alto's eyes, Microsoft's communication product Skype can "get through pretty much any security platform out there".