Other data squired from Symantec's six-month analysis ranges from a major jump in the number of worms that exploit Windows to hackers after financial gain, not notoriety, said Dunphy. The number of worms and viruses aimed at Windows increased by two and a half times over the same period in 2002, according to the company's numbers.
And hackers aren't after just kicks anymore. "Their intent isn't fun and games," said Dunphy. "Their attacks are even more malicious [than before] and they're actually utilizing these threats to steal money."
Attacks after confidential information -- such as credit card numbers, passwords, and encryption keys -- were on the increase in a major way during the last half of 2003. The percentage of threats with information theft as their target grew by 519 percent in the last half of 2003, and accounted for a whopping 78 percent of all Symantec's top ten submissions, up from just 22 percent in the first six months.
Although Dunphy drew a dark picture of the state of security, there are some hints that the future will be a bit brighter. One area: automated updating on the part of operating systems to patch vulnerabilities.
"The trend is to automate [patches] and do this in the background," said Dunphy, pointing to announced plans such as Microsoft's to integrate automatic vulnerability patching in Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) this summer. "Operating system vendors are moving in the right direction to make patching easier," he said.
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
