CIOs must evaluate which threats are worth tackling

Malware threats rise to an all-time high

Malware is at an all-time high, according to McAfee

Malware threats have continued to rise in the second quarter of 2010, an increase on the 10 million new instances catalogued in the first half of this year, according to McAfee’s most recent quarterly Threats Report.

With about 55,000 new pieces of malware appearing every day, AutoRun malware and password-stealing Trojans are the top malware threats.

Greg Day, principal analyst at McAfee, said the rise in malware means that organisations’ IT security teams must work out which threats they need to protect themselves against.

“Some organisations have woken up to this but others haven’t: as a chief information officer (CIO), you just can’t do everything,” he said.

He said that organisations have approached security in the past by providing blanket coverage. This means making sure the anti-virus software is up to date and the right file rules are in place. However, Day said there are certain threats for which CIOs have to go the extra mile.

“Conficker was a pretty prolific threat,” he explained. “Although people updated their anti-virus, it got past these barriers in many companies so they had to do something extra.

"In addition, a variation of Nearbot came out at a similar time, worked via multiple vulnerabilities, and was another back-door Trojan that stole information, but it was not nearly as widespread.

"CIOs need to figure out which Conficker they have to create extra protection for, and which viruses are more like a Nearbot – in which case it isn't worth their time and effort to go that extra mile.”

This information has to come from the security industry. Because of the rise in cloud services, the security industry has a much broader and more accurate view of the threats than it used to, according to Day.

He urged CIOs and security vendors to work together because the vendors can provide a much more dynamic view of the threats and help customers collate information on the potential scale of a threat, and decipher which threats are potentially harmful to the business.

“You really want your vendor telling you what you need to prioritise,” said Day. “You want to know if you have solved the problem already, and if so, have you solved it across the board, are there gaps? And if so, where are the gaps and are they worth my time and effort to fix?”