CA, Inc. issued a report last week detailing the top security threats of 2009, as well as predictions for 2010. What’s surprising?
Fake or rogue security software was the most prevalent threat of 2008. It seems criminals know that we as a population have a weakness for security products. We want to be safe, so they hit our vulnerability with security products that are far from secure. This malware product has the look and feel of McAffee, only it’s not quite right.
Email phishing seems to be on a decline, but phishing as a whole is increasing, with internet-based scams leading the pack. Our awareness campaigns to caution customers about email phishing paid off – the customers grew email-savvy, but the criminals grew more sophisticated.
As for 2010, CA expects to see an increase in Malvertising (advertising malware), threats to social networks, and – not so surprisingly – denial of service attacks like we saw this year in political showdowns in Moldova and Iran. Banking trojans are expected to be on the rise as well, and we’d be fool to think criminals would ever really back off financial institutions, since the carrot at the end of the stick is so big.