homework 3

Marcus Leary

2/7/2012

MIS

10 security trends to watch in 2012

            Compared to 2011, 2012 will hopefully be a better year when it comes to internet protection. There were ten different security trends that were brought to people’s attention. The first one is breaches are inevitable, say businesses. Many people, especially CIOs, at multiple businesses over the past few years acknowledge that when people get hacked it is all about when not if. It is nearly inevitable that attacks will succeed because of the sheer volume of hacks that have happened. With the new mandate in place, it is not just about having really good defense, but also have the right technology and practices so they will be able to detect a possible attack. The second is cyber espionage continues. Hacking has always gone low and slow, thus been hard to detect. That technique has been effective because of social engineering techniques that they use. The third is mobile malware continues to increase.  The most attacked phone due to mal-ware is the android operating system. Although compared to some of the other places to hack, phones wouldn’t be the real biggest thing to attack. But never the less, people are doing their best to save phones from being hacked. The fourth is mobile devices get anti-theft protection. Businesses have tried to find ways to help their employees find their phones in case they lost them and so far they have found a way to locate them electronically. The fifth is spear-phishing scourge continues. Businesses have trained their employee’s only open files that are deemed important to their work. The sixth is social engineering attacks hit social networks. Since so many people have sign onto social networks like Facebook and Twitter, that has made it easier for hackers to try and get into other businesses sites. The seventh is botnets keep infiltrating businesses. Many malware programs come in through Trojan horses made by tool kits. Malware aim at making PCs into silent nodes and become used at their own discretion. The eighth is breach notifications gain greater traction. Many countries, like Germany, have passed bills making it so certain parts of the governments help protect against hacking. Number nine is critical infrastructure rhetoric keeps heating up. The only issue that some people see with making part of the government go through the internet to see if people are hacking is that about 95% of the internet is private and some people don’t want that privacy invaded. The final trend is code gets externally reviewed. Since the codes in many businesses haven’t been properly cleaned, hackers would have an easier time breaking through that code and getting valuable info. That is why many businesses have their IT people properly clean up the code and fix any flaws that they find.