Economic decline may hurt online security, says expert

by israeli.agent | March 15, 2009 at 04:16 am

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Significance of this news that when highly qualified individuals suddenly loses their jobs, ther is a higher chance that they tend to get into illegal activities like phishing attacks and other information thefts. As recession and economical slowdown soars to new heights (or lows) not everyone are ready to face the consequences of suddenly finding themselves among the unemployed.

Online security awareness is still very low in India, especially in small cities. Hence it is easy to make them targets of such attacks. Another issue is the widespread use of pirated and cracked software. It is very funny to see that people use cracked versions Antivirus and other security software and even brag about them that like "I have latest version of **** software, with all the latest updates" :-)

Cyber security experts predict that India is just waiting for a "cyber tsunami" to happen.

The decline in the global economy is one of the factors that will impact online security in 2009, with phishing attacks and other fraudulent activity of a financial nature increasing during the year, say experts.

Phishing, which involves stealing or appropriation of personal information for misuse, has emerged as a major cyberthreat today.

Shantanu Ghosh, vice-president, India Product Operations, of the security and information management company, Symantec, said phishing attacks had been growing in India. A Symantec report released in December revealed that India accounted for four per cent of the fraud attacks using IP addresses, and also found itself in a “prominent position among countries hosting such sites.”