IronPort Internet security trends predictions for 2008
ConvergenceAsia staff
14/12/2007

IronPort Systems, a Cisco business unit and a provider of enterprise spam, virus and spyware protection has announced the availability of its 2008 Internet Security Trends Report. The IronPort report highlights the key security trends of today and suggests ways to defend against the sophisticated new generation of Internet threats certain to arise in the future.

“2007 marks a turning point. Just when malware design seemed to have reached a plateau, new attack techniques have burst forth, some so complex – and obviously not the work of novices – they could have only been designed by means of sophisticated research and development,” said Tom Gillis, Vice President of Marketing for IronPort.

“For a time, security controls designed to manage malware were working. But, as a result of this success, the threats they protected against were forced to change. In 2007, many of these threats underwent significant adaptation. Malware went stealth, and its sophistication increased,” he continued.

According to the report, an estimated 60 million people have had data about themselves exposed over the past 13 months, and there has been an estimated 20 billion dollars spend in clean-up costs and lost productivity worldwide.

The study showed that as much as 60 per cent of corporate data resides on unprotected PC desktops and laptops. In addition, 48 per cent of organisations do not have a policy for notifying customers when their private data may be at risk.

Modern malware borrows characteristics from the social networking and collaboration sites associated with Web 2.0. The new variants of Trojans and malware will be increasingly targeted and short lived, and will be even harder to detect.

The overall trends in spam and malware, the report said, can be characterised by a larger number of more targeted, stealthy and sophisticated attacks. Specific observations include:

- Spam volume increased 100 per cent, to more than 120 billion spam messages daily.

- Spam has become less focused on selling product, and more focused on growing spam networks.

- Viruses are less visible, but increasing in number. Virus writers have evolved from the previous mass distribution attacks, such as “Netsky” and “Bagel”.

- The duration of a particular attack technique decreased substantially. In previous years, spammers would employ a typical technique, such as the use of embedded images, for months. More recent techniques, such as MP3 spam, lasted only three days.

The IronPort Internet Security Trends Report can be found at http://www.ironport.com/securitytrends/.

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