Security predictions for 2011: Symantec

Jan Vermeulen

Jan Vermeulen is a technology journalist and web developer at MyBroadband. After receiving a Computer Engineering degree at the University of Pretoria he worked at...

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Symantec announced its security and storage predictions for 2011 based on what they are observing in the information protection landscape.

As technologies become smarter and faster, the threats to these technological assets follow suit, Symantec said.

For example, the exponential consumer adoption of smart mobile devices will increasingly result in these devices making their way into enterprises through the back door, blurring the lines between business and personal use, and driving new IT security models to market in 2011.

Analyst firm IDC estimates that by 2010 year’s end new mobile device shipments will have increased by 55 percent, and Gartner projects that in the same time frame, 1.2 billion people will be using mobile phones capable of rich Web connectivity.

Smartphones are a privacy risk

Gordon Love, regional director of Symantec in Africa, said that although cyber-criminals have shown little interest in mobile devices in the past, mobile devices will continue to grow as a source of confidential data loss.

As devices grow more sophisticated and as a handful of mobile platforms corner the market, it is inevitable that attackers will target them, Love said.

Fame, then fortune, now espionage

Cybercrime has moved from fame to fortune and recent trends suggest a move towards espionage, Love said.

The Stuxnet worm received a lot of attention this year and was eventually found to target centrifuges typically used in the enrichment of Uranium.

Media reports said that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad eventually admitted that the worm had created problems for a “limited number” of their centrifuges used in refining their nuclear fuel.

Love also mentioned cases in 2009 where military drones were taken over, as well as a European defence force that had to ground their planes and an aircraft carrier due to cyberattacks.

A large American city’s whole power grid was taken down by another attack in 2009.

Lower barrier to entry for cybercriminals

Another problem is the lowering barrier to entry into the world of malware and spyware. Love commented that one used to have to be pretty intelligent to perform these kinds of attacks, but spyware can be purchased by would-be cybercriminals for as little as $25 (USD).

This is evidenced by the fact that Symantec released more virus signatures for their security software in 2009 than they have in the 7 years prior, Love said.

He reiterated the statistics previously released by Symantec that indicated they had written 9 million signatures for new viruses and malware during 2008, and that the number increased to 20 million during 2009.

Move to reputation-based security software

Reacting to this flood of new attacks, Symantec will move towards reputation-based technology.

According to Love this will allow the company’s security software to identify possible threats without a threat signature first becoming being available.

SA-originating cyberattacks on the rise

Closer to home, Love said that South Africa is climbing the ranks of countries from where cyberattacks originate.

These attacks don’t necessarily come from cybercriminals within South Africa, but from systems that have been compromised and are being used in cyberattacks without the user or administrator’s knowledge.

Love warned that they are seeing an increase in the number of infected computers in South Africa, which likely resulted in the country moving from 50th to 43rd in the malware originating rankings.

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