Wish though we might otherwise, security attacks on information systems and computer viruses aiming to steal personal and financial information are still rising.
Deloitte & Touche reports a new survey showing security attacks more than doubled since last year, according to 100 IT chief security officers at world financial institutions who took part in the sampling. The survey said 83 percent of those queried said their systems were compromised in the past year, compared to 39 percent reporting likewise for the previous year. Forty percent of those attacked said they incurred financial losses, Deloitte & Touche said.
"Financial institutions are fighting an ongoing battle to combat and mitigate ever-increasing security threats and attacks and privacy violations, as well as comply with the increasingly stringent regulatory environment," Deloitte & Touche national leader of security services Ted DeZabala said regarding the survey.
Meanwhile, Symantec's latest study of the 10 most widespread computer viruses in the second half of 2003 showed a whopping 519 percent rise in the volume of virus-packing messages threatening user privacy and confidentiality, the makers of Norton Antivirus said in May. The company also thinks businesses are trying to limit their liability when viruses and other breachers steal sensitive customer information.
Another problem is that it isn't clear as to how far businesses and consumers are victimized by such viruses, Symantec said, not to mention exactly how much damage is actually done. But the company did say financial services took 7.8 severe attacks per every 10,000 security events, compared to the 1.9 shown in the telecommunications industry. And most such attacks, Symantec added, looked as though they came from the U.S.
The company said six of the top 10 virus, worm, and targeted attacks they saw in the last six months of 2003 exploited Web application flaws – such as several seen in Microsoft Windows or Internet Explorer – which Symantec noted make prime targets because firewalls usually block traffic in some programs but allow most Web traffic overall.
