McAfee Avert Labs has released an updated TOP 10 security threats for 2007. It appears that well-known security concerns like phishing, spam, bots and rootkits are on the rise. This article continues the story presented in Part 1.
6. Identity theft and data loss will continue to be a public issue.
The unauthorized transmission of information will become more of a risk for enterprises. This includes loss of customer data, employee personal information and intellectual property from a variety of channels—applications, networks, and even physical channels, like USB devices, printers, fax and removable storage.
7. The use of bots will increase.
The statistics from our daily collections show that bots actually declined to a low point in November 2006, but are now increasing again. The numbers aren’t as high as they were 12 months ago, but they’re definitely heading up.
8. Parasitic malware will make a comeback.
There’s no doubt about this one. Philis and Fujacks continue to be active parasitic families, and Avert Labs has classified more than 150 new variants of these two families since 2007. And, let’s not forget other families like Sibil, Grum, and Expiro.
9. The number of rootkits on 32-bit platforms will increase.
According our Virus Tracking Map, approximately 200,000 systems reported rootkit infestations since the beginning of 2007—a 10 percent increase over the first quarter of 2006. (By the way, if you want to check your system, download our free Rootkit Detective. And, of course, VirusScan for Enterprise includes antirootkit technology.)
10. Vulnerabilities will continue to cause concern.
Not only do they continue to cause concern, there are more of them to worry about than ever before. In January and February 2006, Microsoft issued patches for five important and five critical vulnerabilities. During the same months this year, Microsoft patched nine important and 27 critical vulnerabilities. |
