Speaking at Infosecurity Europe 2022 this week, Mark Guntrip, senior director of security strategy at Menlo Security, said that so-called 'HEAT' (Highly Evasive Adaptive Threats) attacks require a renewal of the ‘strong front door’ model of threat blocking, as standard detect-and-respond techniques are proving unequal to their defensive role.

HEAT attacks are a class of cyber threat that target web browsers as the primary attack vector. They go on to employ techniques to evade multiple layers of protection such as firewalls, secure web gateways, sandbox analysis, URL reputation and phishing detection.

“HEAT attacks are used as the initial access point to deliver malware or to compromise credentials,” said Guntrip. “They allow cyber threats to deliver malicious content like ransomware to the endpoint by adapting to the targeted environment.”

Menlo Security detected a 224 per cent increase in HEAT attacks in 2021 and expects a similar increase for...