IBM
released results from its annual X-Force 2010 Trend and Risk Report,
highlighting that public and private organizations around the world faced
increasingly sophisticated, customized IT security threats in 2010.
According
to the report India was the
top country for phishing email origination in 2010 at 15.5 percent, followed by
Russia
at 10.4 percent. Spam has continued to incline and grow continuously in India from
spring 2009 to autumn 2010.
The
report highlights that U.S.,
India, Brazil, and Vietnam were the top four
spam-sending countries, accounting for nearly one third of worldwide spam.
Based
on the intelligence gathered through research of public vulnerability
disclosures, and the monitoring and analysis of more than 150,000 security
events per second during every day of 2010, key observations from the IBM X-Force Research
team included:
More
than 8,000 new vulnerabilities were documented, a 27 percent rise from 2009.
Public exploit releases were also up 21 percent from 2009 to 2010. This
data points to an expanding threat landscape in which sophisticated attacks are
being launched against increasingly complex computing environments.
The
historically high growth in spam volume leveled off by the end of 2010. This
indicates that spammers may be seeing less value from increasing the volume of
spam, and instead are focused on making sure it is bypassing filters.
While
overall there were significantly fewer phishing attacks relative to previous
years, spear phishing,” a more targeted attack technique, grew in importance
in 2010. This further indicates that cyber criminals have become more focused
on quality of attacks, rather than quantity.
As
end user adoption of smartphones and other mobile devices increased, IT
security departments have struggled to determine the right way to bring these
devices safely into corporate networks. Although attacks against the latest
generation of mobile devices were not yet widely prevalent in 2010, IBM X-Force
data showed a rise in vulnerability disclosures and exploits that target these
devices.
From
Stuxnet to Zeus botnets to mobile exploits, a widening variety of attack
methodologies is popping up each day,” said Pradeep Nair, director, IBM
Software Group, IBM ISA. The numerous, high profile targeted attacks in 2010
shed light on a crop of highly sophisticated cyber criminals, who may be
well-funded and operating with knowledge of security vulnerabilities that no
one else has.”
Staying
ahead of these growing threats and designing software and services that are
secure from the start has never been more critical. We have seen significant
increase in interest from clients in India to enhance the reliability of
their security infrastructure,” Nair added.
By
TelecomLead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
