81% of IT Managers Report a Security Incident
Eighty One Percent of IT Managers Report a Security Incident Due to IM or Other Greynets, Costing Companies Nearly $130,000 per Year on Average
In October 2006, data was collected in a survey of more than 1,100 employees (end users) and IT managers to determine the impact that greynet applications have on enterprises, small and medium sized businesses. Greynets -- real-time communications applications that are often introduced by end users and use highly evasive techniques to traverse the network -- pose myriad network and information security risks because they provide vectors for malware, intellectual property loss, identity theft and compliance risks.
While some greynets such as Web conferencing, Web browsing, IM and Skype™ have legitimate business uses, IT needs visibility and control to ensure their safe and productive use. Still others such as P2P file sharing, video streaming, and anonymizers can pose further consequences to the organization. All these new, real-time collaborative applications can be evasive on the network, often circumventing traditional security infrastructure that was designed for email and standard Web traffic.
Results of the survey show that more users are adopting greynet applications while, at the same time, little progress has been made toward combating greynet-related attacks. Eighty one percent of IT managers reported greynet-related attacks within the last six months, about the same rate as one year ago. The most common attacks continue to be from spyware and adware (75 percent), viruses and worms (57 percent), other malware (22 percent) and rootkits and keyloggers (22 percent).
More at http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,18301.shtml