Posted: 21st Aug, 2003 By: MarkJ
The recent 'MS Blaster' worm (virus) epidemic showed just how vulnerable Internet users can be to random security attacks, especially broadband users. New research from the Yankee Group and Gartner backs this up:
Automated bots don't care who they attack; it isn't personal. But an SME is likely to get attacked at some point. Analyst group Gartner estimates that one in five companies will suffer an intrusion attack (above and beyond a virus) in the next two years.
A survey carried out in May 2003 by the Yankee Group estimated that SMEs with dial-up were online for an average of two hours a day, whereas with broadband this went up to eight hours or more, and might well be 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The research estimated that a DSL connection increased the chance of an attack by a factor of five, purely due to the increased time online.
If a connection is left on 24/7, attacks can happen at night when nobody is there to notice. An example is the Blaster worm, which is able to access unprotected machines, and will have installed itself on many networks overnight.The lengthy
VNUNet item can be read
HERE and it's well worth doing so, especially if you're a broadband user. These issues are very real and yet ones that YOU must deal with, thus it pays to understand them and stay updated. Simply having an Anti-Virus checker running isn't enough anymore.