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Help Net Security shared an interesting statistic from the 2019 Webroot Threat Report. 40 percent of malicious URLs were found on good domains. Legitimate websites are frequently compromised to host malicious content.

To protect users, cybersecurity solutions need URL-level visibility or, when unavailable, domain-level metrics, that accurately represent the dangers.
The report also found that while Google was the single most impersonated brand in phishing, 77% of all phishing attacks impersonated financial institutions. (The good news? After 12 months of security awareness training, end users were 70% less likely to fall for phishing attacks.)

And Windows 10 devices were "at least twice as secure as those running Windows 7. Webroot has seen a relatively steady decline in malware on Windows 10 machines for both consumer and business."

hypnosec writes "The U.S.'s National Institute of Standards and Technology has come up with a set of proposed guidelines for security of server BIOSes— the mechanism on which most modern day computers rely during boot up. Recently quite a few instances of malware have been known to persistently infect computer systems, and cannot be removed even on OS re-installs. NIST is proposing a set of measures through which the BIOS can be made more secure and resistant to such firmware manipulating attacks. Mebromi is one such Trojan. NIST published the draft guidelines [PDF] earlier this week and has proposed four different features through which the server BIOSes can be made more secure: authenticated update mechanism; secure local update mechanism (optional); firmware integrity protections; and non-bypassability features."

jasondubya writes "PC Magazine released their review of Microsoft's Anti-Spyware Beta 1. While they agree with most that it has great potential, it has yet to take over their top spot. In an informal test, it removed about two-thirds of the spyware detected and blocked about fifty percent of the threats they attempted to install. After removal, they ran Webroot's Spy Sweeper 3.0. It was able to detect '900 traces of 48 distinct threats still present, including two keyloggers and three Trojans.' With that, it looks like Microsoft still has work to do before they are on top of the market." Several other readers sent in link to Mossberg's review in the WSJ.