Malware Attacks to Double against Critical Infrastructure

ScanSafe, a security-as-a-service vendor, released its Annual Global Threat Report during the 2nd week of February 2010, highlighting that cyber attacks were likely to target organizations of critical infrastructure two times more than any other organization.

The report, which was prepared on the basis of a study of over one trillion web queries processed by the company during 2009, found that the organizations working in the fields of chemical and pharmaceutical, oil and energy, finance and banking and government sectors were at the highest risk.

The report indicated that the oil and energy sector had a 356% more chance of suffering from Trojan attacks and data theft. The chemical & pharmaceutical sector had a risk factor of 322%, while the government was at a 252% risk and finance & banking at 204%.

Commenting on these horrific findings, Many Landesman, Senior Security Researcher at ScanSafe, stated that it was incorrect to assume that cyber criminals were merely after stealing data of credit card for committing identity theft and fraud. Actually, they were widening their operations, she said, as reported by V3 during the 2nd week of February 2010.

The researcher continued that for cyber criminals, the value of credit card data was insignificant as compared to sensitive intellectual and infrastructure data. So it was clear that cyber war had begun, its battlefield was the Web, and organizations were on the vanguard (frontline), Landesman added.

The ScanSafe study also showed how companies increasingly encountered malware. The number of malicious software rose from eight per day in the beginning of 2009 to 19 per day at the year's end.

In her concluding statement, Landesman raised warning about the situation criticality and the growing chaos created by the clever cyber criminals. She said that the forthcoming years' challenges could be met only if the industry and its stakeholders repositioned their thoughts in conformity with the changing situation. Perceived familiarities needed to be forgone and the real problems at hand addressed, such as crimes pertaining to data theft, she added, as reported by Continuitycentral during the 2nd week of February 2010.

Related article: Malware Authors Turn More Insidious

» SPAMfighter News - 2/23/2010