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Gartner: Six Top Security Threats To IT Pros
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-09-20
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
The recently concluded IT Security Summit in London held by Gartner listed a sextet of threats that will give IT managers headaches over the next two years.
It reads like a topic list for Things You Don't Want To Experience at work. InfoWorld listed the six potential problem areas that will vex managers around the world.
Financially-motivated electronic attacks could impact a company in several ways. They could be the method used to commit an outright theft from the company. Or they could impair its communications or online commerce, the impact of which would vary depending on the severity of the attack.
Identity theft will persist as a problem. The number of victims has remained steady, according to Gartner. Most worrisome for companies is the lack of a hard and fast way to fully defend against identity theft. Technological approaches to securing online access have been shown to be vulnerable.
Spyware in general, and keyloggers in particular, pose significant threats when used for corporate espionage. Attacks aimed at getting keyloggers into corporate and government computers have been reported in the United States and the United Kingdom, with the latter being targeted by an undisclosed Asian antagonist.
Social engineering has been prominent in the news, as the expanding scandal at Hewlett Packard revealed the use of "pretexting" to gain access to another individual's personal data by private investigators. Those who lie well can gain all kinds of information from an unsuspecting user with a simple phone call.
Viruses are not going anywhere, so firms will want to keep their antivirus software up to date. It may be a good time to look at solutions that stop questionable messages at the gateway, assuming a company does not have such a defense in place.
Rootkits gained a great deal of attention when it was discovered Sony BMG had placed software on its music CDs that put a rootkit on PCs where those CDs were played. Any user who brings in something to listen to at work could have carried one of those into the network.
Gartner sees rootkits being even more of a problem in five to ten years. This fear may be based on the discussion of hypervisor rootkits like the Blue Pill developed in Singapore by Joanna Rutkowska and discussed at this past summer's Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.
Let's put it this way, if you're good at planning for these attacks, you probably have pretty good job security now.
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Tags: Gartner, Security, Threats
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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