McAfee’s recently published analysis of a 5-year targeted cyber attack operation, which it dubbed Operation Shady RAT, should serve as notice for just how sophisticated attackers are becoming, warns Bill Roth, CMO of LogLogic, an IT data management company. The report included a list of the diverse types of organizations - spanning industries and geographic regions - that were targeted as well as information on the duration of the intrusions. “We, in the security community, need to constantly test our assumptions about the nature of our systems and networks,” says Roth. “Shady RAT shows that advanced persistent threats are not just a clear and present danger, but that they take advantage of the notion of the duration of a normal attack. Attacks are now perpetrated by people with large amounts of resources and time, indicating the need for systems that can retain and manage data for a long period of time.”