Posted by Kim Ann King on Tue, Aug 14, 2007
Did you know that high-tech criminals are exchanging goods on auction sites, leasing time on botnets, and renting lists of security companies’ IP addresses. Too often, their goal is access to one, specific enterprise network – maybe yours – that they can mine for marketable data. Robin Bloor, partner in noted industry analyst firm Hurwitz & Associates recent participated in a webcast called “Confidential Data for Sale: 7 Ways High-Tech Criminals Compromise Your Computers.”
Today’s hackers are after your enterprise data, and the tools and services they employ to get at it are supported by a sophisticated and fast-growing criminal industry. Even more surprising, and worrying, is how ineffective today’s standard enterprise security practices are at stopping these sophisticated attacks. Consider the following:
- It takes many companies days or weeks to deploy a patch, yet a virus can morph into an undetectable state within a few hours.
- For $200 you can buy a shrink-wrapped hacker’s software development kit (with updates).
- There are more than 5 million PCs under the control of botnets.
- Most of these viruses – if not all – can be stopped if PCs blocked unauthorized software.