One Out of Four Data Breaches Involves Schools

Federal computer security experts claim that cyber attackers have become more advanced and wiser in their crimes. This is bad for schools as it has been found that one out of four-security breaches involve educational institutions.

In a recent Educause/Internet2 conference, computer security professionals, federal and private sector officials dwells upon the growth of cyber criminals and the recent group of security threats.

Vice President of Product Management for Symantec Group, Brian Foster, said that a big shift has been recorded. Hackers have become thieves and everything ranging from intellectual material to identities is stolen in magnified quantity, as per the news of eSCHOOL NEWS on May 14, 2008.

As per DHS statistics, almost 1 Million harmful codes are written, a leap of 500% from past one year. Also, out of those, around 40% are found to be "botnets" which is a range of software robots or bots.

Botnet has found to be a collection of computers, which are connected to the Internet. They are connected to carry out some undistributed work. No doubt a collection of this type can be accessed for meaningful applications, the term botnet is carved for illegal and unauthentic task. Such systems are made of hacked machines that are assembled without the consent of their owners.

Shockingly, as per the same statistics more harmful codes are written in place of regular or normal codes. Further, almost more than 80% of enterprises have been infected by botnets, did not know that they have been attacked.

Also, as per the latest research from Marshal's TRACE team, a single botnet has emerged so magnificently that it accounts for half of the total spam. Further, the Srizbi botnet has increased its network manifold since the start of 2008 and has now become the world's leading spam botnet.

Few days back, the officials of Oklahoma State University said that the parking of schools transit service computer server has been compromised. A district spokeswoman informed that the computer network of Sweetwater Union High School District has also been hacked and its password has been changed.

Brian informed that the criminals on Internet have shifts their focus from fame oriented hackers to money orientated thieves. He also said that nowadays hackers have become more advanced, indiscriminate, focused and had only a few named variants.

Related article: On-Campus Placements By Internet criminals

» SPAMfighter News - 23-05-2008

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