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The number and severity of cyber attacks increased dramatically in 2007.
Much of Estonia’s Internet user community, including several government agencies, was crippled by a denial-of-service attack started by a bunch of students.
The Anti-Phishing Working Group noted a 48 percent increase in phishing incidents at financial institutions worldwide between October and November 2007.
Organizations of all sizes are targets of cyber attacks. Many of the attacks rely on human interactions – phone calls and e-mails designed to dupe innocent employees into revealing sensitive information that can be used to infiltrate corporate networks.
To gain perspective on the risks and challenges organizations face, I sat down recently with Warren Peterson, president of Security Certified Program, our IT security training partner.
Q: There has been a lot of talk about security moving past the network perimeter. What advice can you give organizations on their perimeter defenses?
A: “While external threats become more prevalent, there is the risk of the perimeter becoming stagnant. Information security professionals must maintain a solid system of firewalls at the same time that they are implementing further security controls.
“It is important not to ignore the perimeter, as it will always be a point of attack for those trying to penetrate the network. The perimeter must be considered your first line of defense for attacks, not the entire line.”
Q: Will we ever see the end of spam?
A: “It seems that after years of effort, spam is only on the rise. Spam will continue to flood the in box in 2008, and it will become more effective, not limited to annoyance. ... Some estimates suggest that by the end of 2008, there will have been enough spam sent to send at least 20 spam messages for every person on earth.”
Q: I’ve heard a lot of discussion of “bot armies.” (Bots are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet.) How concerned should we be?
A: “The number of bots on the Net will grow during 2008, and their functionality will increase to more sophisticated attacks. Bots that are limited to denial-of-service attacks will continue to be annoying, but the larger threats will come from bot armies that are no longer centralized but are decentralized in nature.
“These decentralized armies have no single point of control and will become harder to track down. In addition to the decentralized changes, the literal size of the bot armies will increase. The Storm Worm created a bot army of more than 1 million infected PCs, and it is likely that in 2008, we will see similar bot armies created.”
Q: How big is the security risk from my own employees?
A: “More and more organizations will realize one of their main security risks is the lack of security training to end users, the everyday non-IT people using computers and networks. These organizations will seek out programs to address educating their non-IT computer users to strengthen the overall security posture of the organization.”
Feige is owner of New Horizons Computer Learning Center of South Dakota
339-3221
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