The statistics inspire awe, or fear: 90-95% of all organizations have already been penetrated.
Already.
McAfee has exposed what it calls the ‘Biggest Transfer of Intellectual Property in History’, a massive transfer of intellectual capital that represents a huge threat to the U.S. and the rest of the industrial world – aside from China. Why? Because:
“The likely culprit: China.” –
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So what we’re dealing with is true economic warfare, being engaged at the level of cyberspace. The big, deep, baddie threats are the APTs, the Advanced Persistent Threats. And the biggest, and baddest, of them all is Stuxnet. Arguably a product of our own NSA, or maybe Israel (surely home of some badass coders), or both. Or somebody else.
Where is Stuxnet now? Read an update at http://www.darkreading.com/advanced-threats/167901091/security/attacks-breaches/231002783/a-stuxnet-comeback.html . Executive Summary: it’s too closely targeted on the Siemens controllers used by centrifuges – authorities think. I’m glad they’re confident.
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Australia isn’t. It’s been the victim of a “massive” cyberpenetration. Once again, its nearby neighbor China would appear blameless. Or not.
”Electronic intelligence gathering is now a huge industry,” Mr Irvine said. ”It is being used against Australia on a massive scale to extract confidential information from governments, the private sector and ordinary individuals.”
He hinted that Australia is often targeted by foreign spies as an easy access point into the intelligence holdings of the US and Britain.
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So basically, enterprises, organizations and governments are being hit with much more advanced cyberattacks. The game has escalated from viruses infecting individual users’ computers, to APTs that are stealing companies’ crown jewels. See this article at eWeek.com:
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Yeah, we know this department:
“There is still a reluctance amongst organizations to believe this is happening.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/04/us-security-cyber-raids-idUSTRE77314K20110804