Security Specialists: Ready for the Future?

With the growing number of cyber
attacks it is very clear that as years pass by, they will not only be
faster and more target oriented rather they could be dynamic enough
to go undetected. Cyber crime is becoming an area of great interest
to people wanting to make quick bucks overnight. Cyber crime is
getting more organized now, and it is not necessary for a cyber
criminal to have a technical bent of mind to be able to cripple
someone's business. With the web expanding its reach, cyber crime
is expected to be seen as the next big task to be taken up by
experts, especially those who are in the business of ensuring
security. Are security specialists prepared to deal with the growing
number of challenges in the Internet landscape? This is what we are
trying to figure out. Each time the security specialists come up with
new measures to prevent cyber attacks through malwares, cyber
criminals come up with newer ways to attack.

The growing popularity of social
networking sites is actually turning out to be a good deal for cyber
criminals. Not only this, with newer technologies like smartphones
and tablets, cyber criminals are going to have a field day. There is
no uniform process followed to handle security of technology, as of
now. The networks are becoming wider and more open, so there is a new
challenge for security specialists every time.

CYBER ATTACKS GETTING EASIER

Those days are gone when cyber
criminals were considered geniuses, and cyber crime was confined to
just few groups. These days, it is expanding and getting more
organized. One of the reasons could be the easy availability of
'attack tool kits' which are software programs designed to affect
computer networks while a user surfs malicious websites. According to
a Symantec report: “Attack tool-kits are accessible, easy to use and
are being
utilized much more widely. Attack tool-kits are a medium that enable
threats to proliferate faster, and are an indicator of the increasing
organization and sophistication of the underground economy.”

TS Wong, director sales, APAC at Panda
Security says,“These tools are very easy to use, so criminals do
not need a high experience to perform attacks. From the user point of
view, these attacks are using mainly known vulnerabilities, so having
all the software in the computer (OS, Browser, PDF readers, etc) is
becoming mandatory. Doing this we can stop most of the attacks. Of
course, having an anti-virus is also mandatory, and if the anti-virus
is able to use the Cloud then there is no need to wait for slow
traditional updates. When a new attack shows up, detection can be in
place in a matter of minutes.”

Every technology which attracts a lot
of users will attract cyber criminals too. The growing popularity of
smartphones, tablets is one such example. For quite a long time most
transactions happened on PCs but now people are more experimentative
with the latest technology and they prefer making transactions from
their smartphones. “Until recently cyber attacks were
not focussed on these (technologies) because they were mainly used as
augmented devices. Most business or financial transactions happened
on the PC,” says Ashish Dhawan, Country Director- Enterprise, India
and South Asia at Juniper Networks.

ARE SECURITY SPECIALISTS READY?

Businesses are becoming distributed and
accordingly, threats are becoming more dynamic. So, security
implementation is getting mandatory. “On the mobile space, things
are not so simple because there is no one dominant player. There is
Symbian, Apple iOS, BlackBerry OS, Android, and they all work on
different hardware platforms,” says Vinoo Thomas, technical product
manager, McAfee Labs. With the advent of 3G and 4G, financial and
business transactions are likely to happen more from mobiles.
Security threats to smartphones can also lead to the theft of
personal financial information, credit card data, and confidential
identity or other files. Juniper has brought its product called
'Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite,' which safeguards smartphones
from viruses, malwares and other threats. The safety of banking and
financial transactions seems to be at stake due to malwares such as
banking Trojans and Rogueware and attack tool kits like Zeus which
have been stealing banking information. “In an age of borderless
organizations, social media, cloud applications, WikiLeaks, tablets
and smartphones, modern, blended security threats from Aurora to Zeus
are slipping past standard security products unchecked. With no
network perimeter or standard endpoint to secure, companies can
secure the content itself by identifying, classifying and
understanding content in all of its forms and wherever it travels so
that it can be protected from attack, theft and misuse,” says
Surendra Singh, regional director, SAARC & India, Websense.
Security specialists are no more planning to provide single point
solutions like anti-virus software, but are now shifting their focus
to complete suite solutions for ensuring endpoint security and
intrusion prevention. “Collaboration, IT consumerization, mobility,
and new computing technologies are increasing productivity while
presenting new security requirements. There is greater pressure on IT
to meet the demands of a dynamic workforce-both in terms of service
delivery and security challenges. New solutions are needed to protect
borderless networks and to help further improve business
efficiencies,” says Harvinder S Rajwant, regional sales director,
India & SAARC, borderless networks — security, Cisco.

CYBER ATTACKS IN THE FUTURE

Internet is now being acessible from
many devices like smartphones, tablets, PDAs, and to offer security
solutions for multiple devices across different platforms is the next
big challenge. “In 2010, there was a paradigm shift in the threat
landscape. While we have been discussing that the cybercriminals'
motive has shifted from fame to financial gain, 2010 marked the third
phase-cyber- abotage. Threats such as Stuxnet indicate that
critical infrastructure is increasingly being targeted. There is a
possibility that attackers would take the lessons learned from
Stuxnet and launch additional attacks targeting critical
infrastructure in the future,” says Shantanu Ghosh, vice president,
India Product Operations, Symantec. Social media users are making
their personal and professional information available on public pages
and they are more vulnerable to spam and malicious websites.
Emphasizing on the corporate data breaches which may occur over
social media channels, Singh explains, “Search poisoning won't be
limited to Google, it will migrate to Facebook. Hackers will
manipulate Facebook search algorithms to trick users into visiting
fake brand and celebrity pages and increase exposure to malware.”

According to a report released by Ernst
and Young, 61% of Indian enterprises overall will increase their.The
top five areas of security investment for Indian enterprises,
according to the E&Y study, are business continuity, data loss
prevention, information security risk management, compliance with
regulatory requirements and corporate policies. “With the growing
diversity of operating systems among companies, as well as the
growing use of mobile devices, cybercriminals should have a very
profitable 2011. Their tactic will be to put a new spin on social
engineering by way of 'malware campaigns', by bombarding
recipients with emails that drop downloaders containing malware. All
this will largely be made possible because of the Internet,” says
Amit Nath, country manager, India and SAARC, Trend Micro. The
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has
recently issued a report warning world leaders to prepare for more
disruption from cyber attacks in future. With the growing number of
cyber weapons like tool-kits, viruses, worms, Trojans and many more,
cyber attacks seem to dominate existing and new technologies.