Category: Statistics

The professional service firm’s annual Global Security Survey showed a dramatic rise in the number of respondents reporting system breaches.

“Security threats such as viruses, worms, malicious code, sabotage and identity theft are real and have already cost millions of dollars in lost revenues to institutions globally,” Ted DeZabala a principal and national leader of Security Services for Deloitte & Touche, said in a statement.

Despite that, fewer respondents reported fully deployed antivirus measures — 96 percent last year compared to 87 percent this year. Also, IT security budgets were flat at more than 25 percent of the survey base, with 10 percent reporting reduced security budgets.

The survey found gains in the areas of privacy and regulatory compliance efforts, where two-thirds claim to have a privacy management program in place, up incrementally by 6 percent over the previous year. Most identified themselves as “effective users of demonstrated technology” according to the surveys authors. That said, only 9 percent were willing to take risk associated with being an early adopter.

The survey also found vulnerability and identify management technologies were the two most common technology initiatives planned for pilot programs or deployment in the next 18 months.

A recent Gartner group survey estimated the cost of fake e-mail ‘phishing’ attacks at $1.2 billion dollars. This year also looks to be bad for viruses and Trojans of all sorts, though according to one study infection rates are holding steady.

More info: http://www.internetnews.com/fina-news/article.php/3360961

The report said server unit growth for the March quarter was up 27 percent (1.6 million units) over last year while worldwide revenues grew 9.3 percent to $11.8 billion.

Despite legal threats from SCO Group and competition from Microsoft, Gartner’s report said Linux continued to be the growth powerhouse in the operating systems server market, with a revenue increase of 57.3 percent in the first quarter of 2004.

Windows continued to be the operating system of choice for servers with revenue hitting 35.1 percent of total market share. On a shipment basis, Windows dominated all others with 69.4 percent of the OS server market.

As for Unix, the study said the OS suffered a decline with first quarter revenue down 2.3 percent from the first quarter of last year.

Each of the major vendors of the low-end servers, IBM, (Quote, Chart) HP, (Quote, Chart) Sun, (Quote, Chart) and Dell (Quote, Chart), have something to brag about — depending on how they read Gartner’s tea leaves with respect to product cycles, industry segment emphasis and geographic demand patterns.

Although IBM made the most money from servers in the last three months, HP sold the most units, and Dell gained the most ground, said Mark Stahlman, technology analyst with Caris & Company.

He told internetnews.com the only vendor who is positioned for significant upside in this market is Sun.

Sun has been working very hard to make up for lost time, bolstering its volume server lineup with support for x86 products.

The company recently said its Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) for the Solaris OS on x86, doubled in size in the last six months.

More info: http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3359981

Spam hotspots are emerging as the global levels of junk mail worldwide continue to increase. MessageLabs figures also indicate significant regional variations and spam “hot spots”, despite attempts to deter spammers through legislation. Currently, email traffic sent to the United States, the UK, Germany, Australia and Hong Kong represents more than 97 per cent of the global spam volumes being filtered by MessageLabs. The figures suggest spammers are targeting English-speaking countries and regions where the proliferation of Internet/email usage is at its highest. The majority of spam originates in the US, with Boca Raton, Florida the worldwide capital of junk mail.

Mark Sunner, Chief Technology Officer at MessageLabs, commented “The US presents the widest market for spammers in terms of Internet access and adoption of email as a communications tool. While it currently has the worst global figure at 83 per cent, it’s only a matter of time until the UK falls victim to similar volumes in around six-months time, whilst Asia-Pacific countries will likely see the same impact in 12 months time. “Countries where English is a widely-used language, particularly in electronic communication, will always be a natural target for spammers as mass mailing in one common language is by far the easiest way for them to disperse their messages,” he added.

A study from rival message filtering firm Clearswift out yesterday suggests financial spam (37.8 per cent) is close to overtaking pharmaceutical spam (40 per cent) as the most common form of junk email. Sexually explicit spam has been on decline ever since, accounting for only five per cent of total spam seen by Clearswift last month.

US Federal Trade Commission rules insisting that porno spam needed to be labelled as “SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT” came into effect last week. US laws (the CAN-SPAM Act) allow companies to send junk email without prior consent but it does at least criminalise hiding the true origins of spam. European anti-spam laws insist on prior consent but largely fail to criminalise spamming. Only Italy and Australia, as far as we’re aware, have anti-spam laws that both insist of prior consent backed up by criminal sanctions against offenders.

More info: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/25/spam_deluge/

According to consultant Deloitte’s 2004 Global Security Survey, many of these hacks resulted in financial loss. But even with security attacks on the rise, a quarter of firms admitted that their security budgets were frozen.

The study reported that 83 per cent of respondents admitted their systems had been compromised in the past year, compared to only 39 per cent in 2002. Of this group, 40 per cent stated that the breaches had resulted in financial loss to their organisation.

“Financial institutions, particularly security officers, are facing greater challenges than ever,” said Simon Owen, partner at Deloitte, in a statement. “They are fighting an ongoing battle to overcome evolving security threats and to comply with an increasingly stringent regulatory environment but, at the same time, resources have stagnated.”

Companies are sliding backwards when it comes to the use of security technologies, Deloitte claimed.

While more than 70 per cent of respondents said they saw viruses and worms as the greatest threat to their systems in the next 12 months, the number with fully deployed antivirus measures was down to 87 per cent from 96 per cent in 2003. One third of respondents felt that security technologies acquired by their organisations were not being used effectively, while only one quarter felt that their strategic and security technology initiatives were well aligned.

More info: http://www.infomaticsonline.co.uk/News/1155258

The Western European information security software market accounted for almost $2.5bn of that. The total represents just under five per cent of total IT spending – and slightly less than the $43bn spent on printers and multifunction peripherals last year.

However, IDC predicts that IT security spending will grow from 4.8 per cent to seven per cent of overall IT budgets by 2007. IDC also believes that the continuing focus on security bodes well for opportunities within the sector. Corporate concerns with regulatory compliance, spam, worms/viruses, and identity management will help to drive the security software market to achieve more than $5bn in 2008, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 15 per cent.

“IT security investments remain a top priority for most European organizations. This, of course, gives the security industry the opportunity to move beyond a predominantly insurance-type sales approach (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) and instead deliver on the promise of holistic, tailor-made security concepts that enable organizations to literally ‘mind their own business’,” said Thomas Raschke, program manager of IDC’s European security products and strategies research.

According to IDC research – sponsored by Cisco Systems – human error and the time taken to maintain a network between attacks is making businesses vulnerable, concerns that help validate Cisco’s push to embed security into computer networks. IDC predicts that the mobile security software market will grow at a faster clip than the market as a whole, thanks to the boom of remote access. This segment will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 71 per cent, reaching $1.27bn worldwide by 2007.

More info: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/30/idc_security_booming/

Seven of the ten viruses Sophos named to the monthly list were variations on Netsky, with Netsky.p, Netsky.b, and Netsky.d most prominent. Variants new to the list, including Netsky.q and Netsky.t, totaled just 3 percent, proof that newer worms are not always the most deadly. Netsky.q, for instance, had the entire month of April to run, since it was first discovered March 28, while Netsky.t hit the Internet a week later on April 5.

More info: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20040430S0004