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Top security trends for 2009: Cisco

Mahesh Gupta, Business Development Manager, Network Security, Cisco India & SAARC, presents his views

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

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NEW DELHI, INDIA: The Indian security market is fastest growing market in APAC with 30-35 percent year over year growth.

Mahesh Gupta, Business Development Manager, Network Security, Cisco India & SAARC

Mahesh Gupta, Business Development Manager, Network Security, Cisco India & SAARC

As per Frost & Sullivan, the India security market is supposed to touch $213m in 2008. Organizations are fast adopting advanced security solutions to protect end-points, network admission control, application security and security monitoring and event co-relation, and this segment is growing almost double the rate of traditional security solutions.

Trends
Security issues like getting infected and spammed and phished are rampant in every organization. Implementation of technology is no more the only solution to prevent information theft in any enterprise. One of the biggest security threats today is within an organization and people have to be instrumental in making their organization secure.

1. Malware Trends
Fifteen years ago, barely anyone knew what the World Wide Web was. Unlike its earliest predecessors, the modern Web browser provides an amazing, highly interactive experience. Flash animation ads play within a webpage; audio streams on the websites of bands or online radio stations let site visitors listen to music; videos play automatically; social networking sites and widgets integrate contact information, photos, or data from a person's blog with their social networking page; and Adobe PDF documents render seamlessly within the browser.

As the possibilities and popularity of the Web have grown, so has its use as a threat vector. Originally, malicious software was distributed via floppy drives and macros in infected office documents, then via network worms such as Slammer, followed by an enormous rise in distribution via email. Today, a vast quantity of malware is downloaded from websites. Criminals exploit vulnerabilities throughout the entire Web ecosystem to gain control of computers and networks.

A method of propagating malware that reached new levels of popularity in 2008 is compromising legitimate websites to make them hubs for malware distribution. In April 2008 alone, thousands of websites were compromised and tried to infect site visitors with malware.

A vast amount of online crime and profit is enabled by control of personal computers. The malware, or malicious software that infects these computers and turns them into botnet nodes, is the first step.2008 was another banner year for Web-based malware. Online criminals continued employing the Web-based distribution techniques that worked so well for them in 2007, and kept refining them further for greater effectiveness and profit.

Of the malware distributed via the Web, a large portion consisted of Trojans, designed to seem innocuous, invisible, or attractive before being installed. Rootkits, which help downloaded malware stay hidden, were also prevalent. Other widely distributed malware included spyware and keyloggers, both of which send information about a compromised user's computing and Web surfing habits and personal information—including passwords, back to the malware distributors.

The volume of malware successfully propagated via email attachments has declined in recent years. This decline could be related to Web-based malware distribution methods proving so effective, and to the ability of anti-malware products to rapidly detect and block much of the email that contains malware. These factors may have led malware creators to spend more time on malware spread via the Web rather than via email.

2. Botnet Trends
Botnets are the big "workhorses" that power many of today's online threats and criminal activities. Botnets consist of thousands of malware-compromised computers. Those who control the botnets can rent out the processing power and bandwidth available to these computers, or use it themselves. Online criminals are using botnets for pretty much every aspect of Web-based threats, including spamming, sending DDoS attacks, infecting legitimate websites, hosting malicious websites (such as botsites), and propagating more malware.

The Storm botnet, enormously widespread in 2007, was only a harbinger of what was to come. New, even more sophisticated, robust, and scalable botnets, such as Mailer Reactor, Kraken, and an updated, powerful variant of Asprox (which had been around in a less able form for several years), have also had great success. These botnets are designed as reusable platforms that can cycle, synchronize, and distribute dynamic attacks. Like many Web 2.0 technologies, they "promote" collaboration and depend on the network effect. They're adaptive and intelligent, and offer flexibility, redundancy, and security protocols inspired by modern peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

3. Spam Trends
Spam has undergone a significant evolution in the last year. Massive volumes of pharmaceutical and get-rich-quick spam from botnets remain a resource- and processing-intensive issue for many organizations and service providers. Still, the network protection, anti-spam, and filtering solutions in place at most enterprises have made high-volume, low-sophistication spam more of an annoyance than a security issue.

4. Phishing Trends
Earlier, phishing campaigns were widespread and high-volume, and typically pretended to be from large banks with a national presence. Then, an increasing number of phishing campaigns started using the identities of regional and local banks located near the recipient (and thus involved fewer messages per campaign).

The latest types of spear-phishing campaigns include:
* Spam sent via SMS to the mobile phones of recipients in the same area code.
* Email pretending to be from universities with which the intended victims are affiliated as current students, alumni, or faculty.
* Email that attempts to lure the victim into entering login information about their Google Adwords account (not only is the victim's credit card or personal information stolen, but often, their Adwords traffic gets redirected to criminal-run blogs).
* "Whaling" emails, which are extremely personalized to target specific top executives.

Spear-phishing messages currently represent about one percent of all phishing campaigns, but are expected to become more prevalent. This trend bears close monitoring, because the attacks are becoming more sophisticated: Criminals are investing time and resources in personalizing spam and making the messages seem credible.

Today, for corporates, especially in this era of regulatory activity, preserving the integrity, confidentiality and longevity of corporate information is critical to success. As we move further into an information-driven global economy, the value of information, and controlled access to that information, has never been greater.

The goal of IT infrastructure therefore is to create systems that can detect and protect against unauthorized access while providing timely access to legitimate users. Simply denying access in the face of an attack is no longer acceptable. Today's networks must be able to respond to attacks in ways that maintain network availability and reliability and allow a business to continue to function. In many respects, the goal of security is to make networks more resilient by making them more flexible.

As networks are going in complexity and as each industry vertical looks for vertical specific solutions, enterprises are looking at solutions that will allow them to integrate security in every aspect of their network to create an end-to-end integrated security system. Technology would enable these networks to identify threats, react appropriately based on risk level, isolate infected endpoints, and reconfigure the network resources in response to an attack.

Indian n/w security market coming of age
The Indian network security market is coming of age with the gradual acceptance by most enterprises that security has now become mainstream, and therefore adopting a proactive approach towards embracing security measures is a business imperative. Security vendors and researchers are collaborating more closely on the disclosure of vulnerabilities, so that patches and workarounds can be created before the exploitable information is widely available.

Security vendors are also working both together and separately to make it easier to report and discover current security incidents, and to assess threats accurately. Government initiatives designed to enhance security are being implemented in several countries. And law enforcement is working to send online criminals to jail.

Security vendors are actively working to make security simpler, which helps to enhance the implementation of and adherence to security tools and policies. For example, vendors have been disclosing threats and releasing patches more quickly. And to help with crucial user education efforts, many vendors have been making it easier for end users to find information about security risks and threats and to assess their potential negative effects. For many vendors and users, making security simpler with technology means creating security solutions that:

* Make it easy to establish and adapt security policies.
* Automate security tasks (such as encrypting sensitive data or deploying patches).
* Offer protection within, as well as at the edges of, the ever-expanding network.
* Closely monitor and assess threats in real time.
* Protect from threats along multiple vectors.
* Integrate with other security tools.
* Empower workers to safely use new collaboration and productivity tools.

©CIOL Bureau

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