How To Secure Your IT

Any user, system, or personally identifiable information can be sold or used for identity theft, and the line between large and small business is blurred for an online attacker.

Attackers will seek the path of least resistance and SMEs and home users are that path, with customer and employee data contained on small business networks being just as valuable, and is easier to obtain, as data contained on a large business network.

 The high profile security attacks well publicised in the past, such as 'code red', 'nimda' and 'blaster' have now been replaced by smaller targeted attacks focused on stealing information for financial gain. In 2004 alone there were 33 severe security attacks that required immediate responses by security companies. However, in the three years since there have been only four such high-profile attacks.

Interestingly, over the same period, the number of malicious code variants detected by Symantec has grown from 73,000 in 2004 to more than 429,000 so far in 2007. In other words, there are more bad guys out there, they are getting smarter, and they are creating more variants of their code in order to avoid detection.

More importantly, the malicious code writers of today are using a number of techniques that are not detected by many of today’s standard antivirus products. For example, across Asia Pacific, Symantec is currently detecting around 19,000 'bot' infected computers a day. These 'bot' infected computers have a small piece of code installed on them that allows a hacker to take control when he or she chooses. Hackers often have many thousands of infected computers at their disposal and 'rent' the use of 'bot networks' to spammers and other people who want to avoid detection. These infected computers are often only actively under the control of a hacker for a matter of minutes before being deactivated and made to lie dormant until they are next required.