Guest post by Dr. Guy Bunker, Chief Scientist & Distinguished Engineer, Symantec Corporation
I don’t mean how much are you worth, it’s more about your information, your ‘data’. Times have changed and while the average cyber-criminal is still after bank account details and credit card numbers, they are also targeting other information as well. In fact anything that you protect with a username and password is of interest to them. Why? The answer is simple, it’s all about money – to them. At Symantec we have a Global Intelligence Network which monitors the internet for spam, viruses and other malware, however it also monitors some of the underground economy / black market traffic in data – your data. This information is published regularly in our Internet Security Threat Report, available from www.symantec.com. Here are some of the findings on just how much your data is worth to someone else:
Of course, just like any other ‘business’, you can get volume discounts, so you can get 50 credit card numbers for $40 ($0.80 each) or 500 numbers for $200 ($0.40 each)!
The latest ‘attacks’ are not just through email, but through web browsers and plug-ins and increasingly through social networking sites, so the next time you visit a site and it asks to install a plug-in, just do a quick check to see if the plug-in is legitimate – and that you really want it – there is more at risk than you might have imagined.
Dr. Guy Bunker is a Distinguished Engineer at Symantec Corporation. He is responsible for technical strategy for the security and data management group and runs a number of research projects around data loss prevention and intelligent archiving. Guy has worked for Symantec (formerly VERITAS) for more than a decade in a number of different product divisions and roles.
He has been a member of a number of industry bodies driving standards in computer storage and management and is currently an active member of the Enterprise Privacy Group. Guy is a regular presenter at many conferences, including InfoSec, StorageExpo, Transformational Government, Internet Security Forum, RUSI’s Protecting The Critical National Infrastructure, IAAC, Enterprise Architecture and the Symantec user conference, Vision.
Guy has authored a number of books and is currently working on his latest “Data Leaks For Dummies” which is due to be published in early 2009.
Guy holds a PhD in Artificial Neural Networks from King’s College London, several patents and is a Chartered Engineer with the IEE.
Guy’s blog on information security and availability can be found at: www.viewfromthebunker.com
