Report: Rise in virus attacks costs firms dear

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Do you plan on collecting your bonus anytime in the future?

jfrankcarr wrote: "Phishing attempts and virus/trojan emails are stopped by mail filtering software at the server side."

That's some mightly impressive prognostic firewall software you must be using, because how can it predict and detect the following blended threat?
1) Hostile emails are increasingly using the tactic of grabbing the email address, In-Reply-To and subject headers from the outlook inbox, making it appear that the email is a reply to a legitmate email.
2) The email itself contains the social engineering and a URL to one of many compromised webservers.
3) The URL links to a SSL (https://) site. The connection is encrypted from the website to the browser -- no chance of the firewall proxy reading the content.
4) The hostile webpage itself exploits a combination of known vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer that Microsoft has chosen not to relase an update to fix.
http://www.safecenter.net/UMBRELLAWEBV4/ie_unpatched/index.html

Requiring personal responsibility by employees for their Internet activities on the job has also helped.

How can they tell if it's a threat? What indication does the software give them?

To quote myself back in 2000...
http://www.google.com/groups?threadm=slrn8t15s9.1bt.heretic%40heretic.ihug.co.nz
I do agree, but it is easier saying "practice safe computing" than producing
a list of practical rules if your using Microsoft Office in a large
organization ( getting the nice people, especially the overworked ones, to
follow it is a another matter ).

http://www.google.com/groups?threadm=slrn8j2cen.pns.heretic%40localhost.localdomain
Human nature being as it is, relying on users to follow a strict protocol
when dealing with incoming email or other Office documents via the internet
is doomed to failure. Love letter from whom? The temptation to open the
attachments is too great even for the most security conscious person.
To quote Mark Twain "You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time ...". When presented with a dialog
window with Yes/No buttons, a LOT of users click yes without even reading
the dialog.

You stated that MSBlast did cost you your bonus last year. How can expect to earn any such bonus anytime in the near future when that vendor you rely upon, Microsoft, continues to choose not to secure their software against attack?
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22shatter+attack%22

Posted by: David Mohring   Posted on: 03/20/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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