Symantec Internet Security Threat Report

Imagine if you could be in 40,000 places all at once - or cull data from 120 million diverse sources. That pretty much describes the eagle eye view Symantec has of the threat landscape and they've done a thorough job of describing the global terrain in their latest Internet Security Threat Report.

The report points to the increased prevalence of attacks motivated by identity theft, with the government sector accounted for the majority of data breaches - 25% of the total. The Symantec report notes this higher percentage may be due to better reporting by the government sector, pointing out that the private sector may be reluctant to report due to fears of negative market impact.

The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report also discusses the consolidation of today's threats, wherein multiple types of attacks are converging for a single purpose - criminal intent.

"Symantec has observed high levels of malicious activity across the Internet, with increases in phishing, spam, bot networks, Trojans, and zero-day threats. However, whereas in the past these threats were often used separately, attackers are now refining their methods and consolidating their assets to create global networks that support coordinated criminal activity."

In order, the U.S., China, and Germany are the hotbeds of malicious code activity. But when looked at from the perspective of malicious activity per user, the top countries were Israel, Taiwan, and Poland.

The Symantec report also details the:

1. Increased focus on game targeting malware
2. Resurrgence of polymorphic threats, this time with download behaviors
3. Upsurge in previously unseen threats; from 98 in 1H06 to 136 in 2H06

Home users are the most frequent target of today's attacks - 93%. At the same time, today's attacks are more surreptitious than ever before, less likely to be detected rapidly than ever before, and more likely to have direct impact on a user's real life finances. It's a scary combination.

The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report is presented in three ways - the full in-depth report, a marketing list of key trends and highlights, and a high level Flash presentation that helps to visually drive home the data. Whatever your learning modality, one of these should be a good fit. Here's the link to all three: Symantec Internet Security Threat Report center.