The focus on security needs to shift from cleaning up after a problem to anticipating potential problems, he said, with automated patch management and better coordination of software and hardware.
“Security needs to move beyond its niche focus,” he said. Otherwise, it will be impossible to keep up, Thompson claimed.
“More than 100 new viruses are identified every week–and 60 new software (problems) every week,” he said. “We saw a 19 percent increase in attack activity in the first half” of 2003.
In the relatively near future, the world will likely see the debut of damaging threats the industry is calling “Warhol” attacks, as they are likely to achieve fame by spreading across the Internet in 15 minutes. “Day Zero” threats, which exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities, will hit without warning, the Symantec CEO added.
Corporations are also taking action to stem attacks, such as creating more homogeneous computing environments or taking part in initiatives such as the Network Admissions Control program to ban insecure mobile devices from corporate networks, announced Tuesday by Cisco Systems.
Thompson stated that a shift to Linux from Microsoft wouldn’t be a sure way to avoid the kind of recent suffering caused by viruses that exploited holes in Microsoft code.
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