Malware Is Always A Step Ahead Of Us
Viruses, spyware, worms, hackers - there are so many attacks against computing systems in a daily basis, it can make your brain hurt. Especially when the media gets wind of a new potential attack and sends out their ‘the sky is falling, run for the hills’ broadcast. What they seem to miss is the real problem. The ease cyber criminals have in taking over your hardware and software system. And it is very easy.
Applications do their best to provide user friendly interfaces in order to service and retain the lowest common denominator. But, in many instances, the same applications pose an insecure risk, giving the cyber criminal many avenues to egress. As their list of possible user access grows, they also become more intelligent in how they attack, and work their way past defenses.
Some hackers and cyber outlaws are in it for the publicity, the underground credibility from their peers. They love the notoriety. The real hard core criminals prefer to remain away from the limelight, operating behind the scenes. Why make their presence known when they have infected so many systems? For example, botnets, a popular infiltration agent, is estimated to have invaded enough machines to generate approximately fifteen percent or more of the spam the entire globe receives today. And that number could be larger. Another problem is the malware’s ability to change and adapt its footprint, keeping antivirus solutions and vendors behind the race. Another technique is the attack of peer to peer systems, instead of the single server operations. Going after the smaller, more unprotected systems, it becomes harder for vendors to catch the virus before it had a chance to perform its destruction.
Botnets pose a further problem due to their ability to hide itself using cryptography to protect itself, and also detect installed security software, changing its known signature. Think of a chameleon that changes its colors to the background it currently clings to. As the worm moves from system to system, it changes its shell from the original signature to a new one not yet determined by security software vendors.
Worms, botnets, morphing viruses, and other related programs seek the easiest path to invade. In the workplace, it becomes the software applications individuals bring in from the outside, installing them on workplace hardware. IT data centers do not have any control over employee actions, or the software they bring with them. Once an external solution is installed, it becomes the weak link in the security chain. Especially if the same external applications are used to perform their day to day tasks. Research performed by Palo Alto Networks in California in the year 2009 indicated some very telling practices.
Their research, performed using a variety of fields including manufacturing, retail, healthcare, government, education, and financial services, included sixty or more businesses and approximately nine hundred thousand users in total. The survey indicated over half of the close to five hundred software applications circumvented IT security. Remote access solutions allowing users to log in and attend to data as they need, was discovered between eighty to ninety five percent of the time. BitTorrent applications was found in over ninety percent of the installations, with file sharing applications clocking in at approximately seventy six percent. Each application with the ability to allow malware intrusion at any moment. While the IT data centers had firewalls and firewall assistants in place, they could not provide authority over the application data that traveled through their network.
Now, with the popularity of social networks, IT data centers have a harder task of protecting the infrastructure. Sending text messages, pictures, MP3 music files, and more, also raises the possibility of malware being passed around without anyone’s knowledge. As users blindly click on links without thinking of the ramifications, it opens the doors for malware to walk right in and take up residence.
This is where training the user base in CISSP CBT training, a very comprehensive information security course, brings knowledge and security awareness into practices that affect an entire organization. K Alliance training has this training, among other fine training courses that improve user productivity. While company security protection has increased, cyber criminals have turned to social engineering to gain entry. Information security training and data security boot camps alert users to the many ways hackers still manage to acquire sensitive information. As user training increases, the threat of infiltration by users decrease.
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