No replies to this topic

[Blake]

As a new year approaches we must prepare for new Internet security threats. Every year, new and innovative ways of attacking computer users emerge and continue to increase in volume and severity. To know where we are going it is helpful to look at where we have been. Finding trends in Internet security has become a valuable, if not necessary, action for companies developing software to protect computer users.

Attacks have increased in sophistication and are often tailored to their specific victim. Trend tracking has shown that in 2008, the Web has become a primary conduit for attack activity. According to Symantec’s Top Internet Security Trends of 2008, attackers have become more difficult to track as they have shifted away from mass distribution of a small family of threats to micro distribution of large numbers of threats.

2008 Trends

Spam and Phishing

This may be the most well known form of computer breaching, and yet it is still the healthiest and fastest growing of attacks. In 2004, Bill Gates predicted that spam would be resolved in another two years. In 2008, we were seeing spam levels at 76 percent until the McColo incident in November 2008, at which time spam levels dropped 65 percent. The battle with spammers has turned into an all out war and spammers are showing no sign of surrendering. READ MORE