Web threats key challenge for Gulf firms

According to data collected by Trend Micro, infection volumes nearly quadrupled between September and November 2007, with particular emphasis on attacking online shoppers during the holiday season. Online commerce sites, such as auction site eBay, and financial institutions in particular attracted a high volume of phishing attacks, where criminals attempt to steal proprietary and financial information.

“One of the major challenges that is emerging is that high-profile websites – social networking sites, banking sites, search engines and blogs – are growing as sought-after attack vectors for criminals looking to take information for the purposes of financial gain and commit identity theft,” said Raimund Genes, Chief Technology Officer of Anti-Malware at Trend Micro.

“An additional challenge is that the number of compromised legitimate sites, which have been breached by hackers, is beginning to outnumber the range of malicious sites created by criminals.

Moving forward, companies in the Middle East will need to ensure that the public face of their website is fully protected, both for their own security and for the protection of the public,” said Justin Doo, Managing Director, Trend Micro, Middle East.

Unmanaged devices such as smart phones, MP3 players, digital frames, thumb drives and gaming stations are increasingly being used to infiltrate security borders of firms.