Security Article: Top Five Security Threats for 2006
Linda LeBlanc, a network analyst at MIT sees 5 security threats for 2006. These are issues that have existed in the past year or two, but she thinks will become a bigger threat throughout this year.
- Targeted Phishing Scams – Linda believes that it isn't that they will be more targeted; it's that the company’s filtering systems already have taken out the ones most likely to be spam and left those that are possibly related to the users or their interests. Therefore the end users are going to be more susceptible to these because the scams will look like the real thing.
- Self-Contained Electronic Devices – PDA/pager/phone/email - Since it’s an all in one deal, the odds of getting exposed to viruses are even higher. As Linda states, “Be the first on your block to download the Blackberry- or Treo-targetted virus. Be the first on your block to bring the company Intranet down with a piggy-backed payload designed for desktops”.
- Spam – As spam filtering becomes more sophisticated, messages will look less like advertisements and more like email addressed specifically to us. Like phishing schemes, spam will feel more personally directed.
- Voice over IP – VoIP will continue to be the industry's darling 'innovation'. The media focus, however, has most frequently failed to address possible security concerns. Linda puts it very nicely: “Let's hook the phones up to the computer so any traffic sniffer will not only have access to all your data, but all your strategic and tactical discussions on how to build your company successfully. Warning bells should be going off for even the most inexperienced IT manager at this point”. As with any technology, proper security implementation has to be included from the outset. Attempts to add security as a secondary consideration are going to cause difficulties in the implementation.
- The House of Gates – Microsoft will continue to experience setbacks in the security arena. With more than 5 billion lines of code to sort through, Microsoft will have more zero-day events to deal with similar to the one announced in late December.
This is the future -- more spam, more phishing, more really cool technology gone wrong, and Microsoft making your life difficult, because you can't live with them and you can't live without the operating system.
Reference:
Top Five Security Threats for 2006