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Called XGen endpoint security and available immediately, the new architecture reflects a security landscape in which increasingly sophisticated exploits arrive far too fast and often for any one form of protection to handle, according to Kevin Simzer (pictured), Trend Micro’s executive vice president of sales and marketing.

Ransomware often distributed via spam emails, especially now that the notorious Angler Exploit Kit (EK) is gone, and Locky appears responsible for a surge of certain delivery methods, researchers say. According to Trend Micro, 71% of known ransomware families arrive via email.

If an individual jumps through the various hoops necessary to access this part of the Internet, they can buy anything from weaponry to counterfeit documents and data dumps -- and stealing a person's identity is cheap, with Trend Micro estimating that each data record is worth less than a dollar in underground marketplaces.

The cloud is rapidly opening new IT delivery options for a wide range of organizations. “It’s an amplifier,” says Mark Nunnikhoven, vice president of cloud research for security solutions provider Trend Micro. “This is really exciting, as it lets organizations focus on their core business.”

Analyses, by both Morphus Labs and Trend Micro, show that the ransomware arrives at its destination either as an executable, downloaded from malicious sites, or as a file, dropped by another malware.

Google announced the Project Zero Prize a week after security vendor Trend Micro spelled out Mobile Pwn2Own 2016, a more traditional hacking contest that will run Oct. 26 and Oct. 27 in Tokyo.

"You need the right mediums for the right people. You can't have a one-size-fits-all training programme; if you're training your developers, you're going to need different content to what you're using to train your sales people, finance or HR people," says Rik Ferguson, VP of security research at Trend Micro, who stresses the importance of making cybersecurity training interesting, something many companies aren't doing.

Christopher Budd, a global threat communications manager at Trend Micro notes that the latest research focused on adware, but scam apps downloaded from unaffiliated app stores put users at risk of being exposed to all sorts of malware. “The biggest thing is the importance of going only to the official app stores,” Budd says. “The mobile malware problem that we’ve seen is almost exclusively a problem with third-party locations.”

The Dropbox attack also is reminiscent of the LinkedIn breach of 2012, when an attack that originally was thought to have impacted 6.5 million users eventually was found to have exposed 117 million users, noted Christopher Budd, global threat communications manager at Trend Micro.

The figures on reactions to ransomware from Trend Micro come following a surge in cyberattacks using the file encrypting malicious software over the last year which has resulted in it becoming the largest threat to cybersecurity, as demonstrated by some cases of Locky infections against high-profile targets.