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HISTORICALLY, the majority of incidents of hacking and viruses were relatively amateurish and were aimed at gaining attention, but infiltration is escalating towards gain, says Dean Brazier, MD of SecureData.
He says a new breed of silent or ghost hackers is emerging that no longer publicises their activities. Nobody knows who they are, so it is impossible to gauge what they are up to.
Over the past 18 months, Trojan-type viruses have evolved that can monitor keystrokes and send information about a user's activity back to a server.
Information stolen in this way could be used for criminal activity such as financial gain or industrial espionage, and the trend is moving in that direction, says Brazier. Antivirus software and firewalls are two areas where organisations are prepared to spend money, but this is because of all the publicity that has been generated when viruses have moved like wildfire through networks across multiple organisations throughout the world.
"The I Love You' virus cost the world about $12bn."
In all other respects, IT security is a neglected area, largely because it is intangible, he says.
For example, when an IT manager says he wants to spend money on implementing an intrusion detection system the CEO is likely to ask him to quantify what losses the company has suffered.
The problem is that a company that has not put the appropriate detection mechanism in place would have no way of knowing if someone has hacked into their system.
It could take a cataclysmic event that brings global business to a halt before organisations take IT security really seriously, says Brazier. One of the problems is that organisations are putting people in charge who are not qualified to do the job, or are leaving it to the IT department.
He says a new breed of silent or ghost hackers is emerging that no longer publicises their activities. Nobody knows who they are, so it is impossible to gauge what they are up to.
Over the past 18 months, Trojan-type viruses have evolved that can monitor keystrokes and send information about a user's activity back to a server.
Information stolen in this way could be used for criminal activity such as financial gain or industrial espionage, and the trend is moving in that direction, says Brazier. Antivirus software and firewalls are two areas where organisations are prepared to spend money, but this is because of all the publicity that has been generated when viruses have moved like wildfire through networks across multiple organisations throughout the world.
"The I Love You' virus cost the world about $12bn."
In all other respects, IT security is a neglected area, largely because it is intangible, he says.
For example, when an IT manager says he wants to spend money on implementing an intrusion detection system the CEO is likely to ask him to quantify what losses the company has suffered.
The problem is that a company that has not put the appropriate detection mechanism in place would have no way of knowing if someone has hacked into their system.
It could take a cataclysmic event that brings global business to a halt before organisations take IT security really seriously, says Brazier. One of the problems is that organisations are putting people in charge who are not qualified to do the job, or are leaving it to the IT department.