Vulnerability Lessons from Aramco

The viral infection that Aramco experienced is too recent to know a lot about, but a couple of things are obvious.  To infect 30,000 devices, the virus was either very, very clever or their anti-virus strategy was very, very vulnerable.  Given the bottom rung priority companies are giving security (all feigned shock aside) it is not surprising. To Aramco, the cost of cleaning their networks is likely insignificant, the fact the incident happened at all is quite significant.  Firms who show their vulnerability just invite new attacks -- especially super rich, political targets.  Malware is showing up in a variety of common multi-stage  attacks, notably phishing and cross-site scripting, malware is an aging attack, but it is acting young again, revisit your policies and reconsider your defenses.