Introduction
APT, formerly known as the Advanced Persistent Threat, is the buzzword that computer security specialists and everyone else is using.Companies are concerned about it, the government is being compromised by it and computer security specialists are using it in every presentation they give.
One of the main reasons organizations are broken into today is because they are fixing the wrong vulnerabilities. If you fix the threats of 3 years ago, you will lose. APT allows organizations and computer security specialists to focus on the real threats that exist today.
While APT is important, we need to clear the smoke and hype, focusing on why it is important and what it means to you. Instead of just using it as a buzz word, if we understand the core components of APT, we can use it to improve our security. In APT, threat drives the risk calculation. Only by understanding the offensive threat will an organization and their computer security specialist be able to fix the appropriate vulnerabilities.