The Month of May we looked back at the 10 year anniversary of the "I Love You" worm which took headlines and had computer users on edge as to whether they were infected with the worm. In the last 10 years as trojan and virus writers became better at what they do, security companys worked hard to establish a wall of defence in hardware firewalls, software, operating systems and public information on the risk of getting infections.
We spoke with Strategic Security specialist and advisor to Microsoft recently about some of the changes over the years and ways to be smarter with working in a business or even home computer enviroment. The company, Microsoft, completed a Security Intelligence report and John shared some interesting statistics related to how employees unwittingly infect their corporate networks by not keeping home computers safe and up to date.
In the Security report, it was revealed that most business security threats are due to employees not practicing what they like to call, good computer hygiene. In system security, the habits we keep at home generally follow us to work, meaning that companies will benefit from security routines employees instill while using their home PCs. According to the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, Trojans—hidden code in executable files—had the highest number of variants of all malware in the first half of 2007. This means Trojans are constantly changing, making them more and more difficult for anti-malware software to catch. For example, an employee could be downloading a free screen saver with embedded Trojans that the employee would never know were there.
What are some of the other threats that face Home and Business users with the new technologies we are using on our PC's? One of the areas has been pinpointed as undocumented or unsecured USB drives. When these devices are placed on several different PCs, from an employee’s work computer to his home laptop, viruses can be carried from one computer to the other.
One of the tools that Microsoft has added to the XP and Vista system has been the MSRT or Malicious Software Removal Tool. The company found that Infection rates observed by the Malicious Software Removal Tool MSRT were significantly lower among systems using Windows Vista® and Windows® XP SP2 than among older Windows operating systems.
We talk with John about this report, get some tips on safety and learn a bit on Back doors, a category that includes bots, pose the most significantly increasing threat to IM users, as attackers continue to use them to control systems and password stealers and key-loggers continue to violate users’ privacy.
Security Tips from Microsoft
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