How To Mitigate Spyware Risks

Imagine you wake up to a news report claiming a competitor has access to your confidential product roadmap. How? Through cleverly disguised spyware embedded within your company network or an employee’s mobile phone.

This scenario, while frightening, is a harsh reality for businesses today. Spyware can infiltrate your systems, silently stealing valuable data and jeopardizing your competitive edge.

Although commercial spyware gets most of the media coverage for targeting government officials, activists, and journalists worldwide, it is far from the sole malware type designed to spy on its victims.

Spyware doesn’t only pose a threat to individuals and civil society but also to enterprises.

Commercial spyware refers to legally available software designed for targeted surveillance and data collection from a user's device, usually a mobile phone. While a recent report by Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) reported 16 different commercial spyware strains from 11 companies, security researchers constantly find new occurrences of such malicious software.

Mobile spyware is usually a high-cost, sophisticated malicious tool. Some strains can be installed without requiring the user to click anywhere, which makes them particularly difficult to detect and fight against.

Keyloggers and stalkerware are malware designed to record users' online presence, such as keyboard inputs and browser activity.

According to a March 2024 report by cybersecurity provider Kaspersky, stalkerware reached "pandemic proportions" in 2023, with a total of 31,031 people affected by the intrusive software that year – up almost six percent compared with 2022.

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Information stealers, or infostealers, are a more sophisticated version of stalkerware that harvests everything from browsing history, documents, emails, messages and camera rolls.

Infostealers are prevalent in cybercrime , with hackers extensively using such tools to steal useful data from their victims.

Although most infostealers primarily target devices running on Google Android and Microsoft Windows, Recorded Future showed in a June 2024 report that macOS infostealers were on the rise .

Trojan apps are programs that impersonate legitimate applications and hide malicious code or links, leading to malicious payloads.

Once installed, they can perform various malicious tasks, such as monitoring your browsing activity and recording keyboard strokes, but also download additional malware and grant cybercriminals access to the infected device.

Some programs, sometimes called grayware, can be designed for legal and even beneficial tasks and espionage purposes. These include cookies, online trackers and adware.

In April 2023, cybersecurity provider McAfee discovered that several Minecraft-like mobile games available on the Google Play Store actually contained covert adware .

Spyware can have many adverse effects on your business and your employees including :

During an Infosecurity Europe 2024 panel session on the Keynote Stage, Brian Honan, CEO of BH Consulting, urged companies to fight against spyware. He explained that even if a firm is not the target of spyware, an employee’s work device might be infected by commercial spyware.

Although there is no silver bullet to prevent spyware from infecting corporate systems and employees’ devices, some best practices can help.

These best practices include:

Adopting a good cybersecurity posture to prevent other, more prominent threats can also help prevent spyware.

Such a posture includes the following basic cybersecurity measures:

Some cybersecurity products specifically scan or protect against certain types of spyware, said Honan during Infosecurity Europe .

“Talk to your vendor and ask them if their software detects and protects against spyware. If they don’t, talk to one that does,” he advised.

Spyware activity can be detected by looking for telltale signs. These include:

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