The Bad Guys are Busy

According to the CSI Computer Crime and Security Survey, some interesting changes are afoot in the world of computer crime. First, the damages claimed are growing - the average annual loss claim from computer criminal activity is up to $350,000 from last year's average, which was $168,000. Given the number of high-profile security breaches we've seen in the news over the past year, that doesn't really sound too surprising. But there's more bad news.

The survey also shows that the nature of the damages suffered has changed. The number one problem is now financial fraud, not losses from viruses, which had claimed the top spot for the previous seven years. This is bad news simply because viruses are often only malicious mischief, however damaging that mischief might be. Fraud is by definition more targeted and focused, and generally means that the target of the fraud was probed and analyzed for weaknesses. It's harder to defend against an attack that was specifically designed for your organization than it is to defend against a lowest-common-denominator threat designed to infect as wide a swath of machines as possible.

If you happen to be in San Francisco this Thursday, you can register to hear CSI Director Robert Richardson present the findings from the 2007 Computer Crime and Security Survey.

Or, if you're looking for more, check out the CSI Conference and Expo, held November 3-9 in Arlington, VA.

Posted by Kevin Carlson at 04:58 PM  Permalink