US Working Tough to Strengthen Its Cyber Defense

Dave DeWalt, McAfee CEO, addressing the McAfee Public Sector Summit on April 12, 2010, said that the government of the US is aggressively responding to a new cohort of sophisticated cyber threats, as reported by gcn.com on April 16, 2010.

He said that there is greater need to move security measures to the cloud in order to improve the defenses. The cloud has now become security's most critical component. However, efforts might not visible at times. More of public-private co-operation is there, especially inside the intelligence and defense communities. Moreover, the responses/feedbacks are based much on the real-time information regarding the vibrant threat landscape.

Notably, according to Dave DeWalt, in 2009, 34 Million malware samples were detected. This indicates that the hackers are working more than usual, giving rise to around 47,000 new malcode per day.

Indeed, to add worth and credibility to his point, DeWalt took the audience back to last year's much publicized attacks made on government agencies and businesses.

Asserting 'Operation Aurora' as the biggest assault on commercial critical infrastructure, DeWalt discussed about how a zero-day attack targeted 150 companies, such as Adobe, Google and Juniper. Internet Explorer vulnerabilities of these companies were attacked by the assaults to penetrate computer systems.

Trying to thieve important company data, source code and intellectual property, the exploit downloaded and activated malicious software into the computers, and then looked for further flaws in the systems. According to DeWalt, 64% of the companies that were hacked admitted that their operations were majorly affected by the attack.

Referring to the 40-minute presentation given by him, DeWalt said that 21,000 new malware are most likely to be seen by the time the event ends, as reported by thenewnewinternet.com on April 16, 2010. He added that the malware is growing exponentially both in sophistication and volume.

Also, according to the expert, the increase of Internet-enabled device and an economy increasingly moving online - a state that forms a backdrop encouraging cyber-crime - are driving the excess of malware.

Hence, to avoid any sort of malicious infiltration, it is very crucial to install Internet security solutions, concluded Dave DeWalt.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 4/28/2010