Critical vulnerabilities up 300 per cent this year says IBM
By Chris Taylor
03/10/2011
This year has been one of the worst for critical security vulnerabilities within the public computing sector, IBM has announced.
In fact, the computing giant even went as far to say that 2011 has been "The Year of the Security Breach" since revealing that critical vulnerabilities increased by 300 per cent since the beginning of this year.
It said in its 'Mid-Year IBM X-Force Trend and Risk Report' that the growing "bring-your-own-device" trend for employees has been largely responsible for corporate security breaches. It highly recommended that companies install anti-malware and patch management software as minimum first line of defence.
"The rash of high-profile breaches this year highlights the challenges organisations often face in executing their security strategy," commented Tom Cross, manager of threat intelligence and strategy for IBM X-Force on Computing.co.uk.
However, despite the worrying statistics - based on the daily disclosures of corporate security breaches - IBM said that there were some positives to be found.
Browsers for example have been increasingly better at fixing problems, with critical security levels at their lowest since 2007. IBM.com also reports that spam levels are down, and less cyber-criminal botnets exist today thanks to the pro-active efforts of law enforcement agencies.
At the same time, analysts are warning that authorities should not become complacent. Commenting on the report findings, Ovum principal analyst Graham Titterington adds: "The people who carry out these attacks will not give up, unless there is no pay-off - whether it is for money or power."
