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IBM Says CyberCrime On The Rise
John Stith
Staff Writer
2005-08-02
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IBM's Global Business Security Index showed cyber crime continues to climb each and every day. With 237 million attacks in just the first half of 2005 alone, this 50% increase over last year doesn't bode well for John Q Computer-user.
At the risk of paranoia setting in, the overall figures seem to tell a pretty horrific picture. According to IBM's report, 1 in 28 emails contained some type of malicious security threat, up significantly from the 6-month period ending in December, which were 1 in 52 emails.
One big issue IBM noticed was the rise in "spear-phishing." This means organizations or individuals were being targeted by these "phisherman" into giving up sensitive information.
The one bright side looked to be a drop in the percentage of spam hitting the inbox. The rate dropped from 83% in January to 67% in June but to keep things real, the email carrying viruses rose 50%.
IBM had some other interesting bits of information in their study too. They said the U.S. still ruled the hacker highway with 12 million attacks. New Zealand was next with a measly 1.2 million and then China with about 1 million. Ireland rounded out the list with about 30,000 attacks.
They also said governments are targeted the most at 540 million attacks followed by manufacturing at 35 million and financial services with just over 34 million (yep, that's your credit card they want). The attacks usually come on Fridays and Sundays and the scouting attacks are frequent in order examine defenses of the various targets. The recon missions totaled out more than 108 million attacks, then came service attacks of over 61 million, web attacks of 29 million, denial of service with 26 million and security administration with more than 230,000.
So what does this say? It says cybersecurity has an extremely long way to go. As the world moves deeper and deeper in the modern electronic age, it continues to become so complex that your average home user or small business owner can be easily overwhelmed, let alone a huge company like British Airways. This information shows that private industry and the governments need to work much closer together to protect the cyber infrastructure of the U.S. and the world.
About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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