
Infestations up by almost 50 per cent, says Websense
Published: 17 May 2006 09:30 GMT
The number of companies reporting spyware infestation has increased by just under 50 per cent over the past 12 months, according to a survey released by internet security specialists Websense.
According to the annual Websense Web@Work survey, published on Tuesday, 17 per cent of companies with more than 100 employees have spyware - such as a keylogger - on their network.
Joel Camissar, country manager for Websense, said: "This is almost 50 per cent growth in the instances of keyloggers that organisations are reporting back. Despite the organisations having a best-of-breed antivirus, anti-spyware and firewall, we are still detecting a huge amount of back-channel spyware communication".
One reason for this growth in spyware infestation is a massive increase in the number of spyware-making toolkits being sold online, said Camissar, who referred to some research that was conducted in partnership with the Anti-Phishing Working Group, earlier this year.
He said: "In April 2005 there were 77 unique password stealing applications. In the latest March report there were 197. Unique websites hosing keyloggers in the same timeframe have gone up from 260 to 2,157 - almost a 10 times growth."
The survey also discovered that survey respondents did not have much faith in their staff being able to distinguish between genuine and phishing websites.
Camissar added: "Forty-seven per cent of IT decision makers said their employees have clicked on phishing emails and 44 per cent believe employees cannot accurately identify phishing sites.
"I am surprised that the results are not showing a larger growth in the number of organisations hit by this kind of threat."
Munir Kotadia writes for ZDNet Australia
With strong experience within the Offshore Marine Survey environments either within a Senior Survey or Senior Engineering capacity, you will be ...
Working for one of leading authority's in aviation, we are currently recruiting for a Survey interviewer at Leeds Bradford Airport. To approach air ...
A leading market research software consultancy is seeking an online survey creator who will create online surveys using specialist market research ...
Agenda Setters 2009
Welcome to the ninth annual Agenda Setters poll – silicon.com's list of the top 50 most influential individuals in the technology and IT industries, from techies and CIOs to entrepreneurs and business leaders. Find out more in our latest special report.
Stories from the web...
Copyright © 2008 CBS Interactive Limited. All rights reserved. Top of page
Clive Longbottom Windows 7: Not perfect - but ready for prime time Microsoft's latest OS fixes most of Vista's ills - but still has challenges ahead
Stephen Kleynhans Mind the details with Windows 7 Just because it might work better than Vista, it doesn't mean you can be sloppy