Symantec: Security holes, malware spike in 2008
If you worry that the Internet is a scary place full of digital pickpockets and online identity thieves, your fears will be bolstered by the latest Symantec Internet Security Threat Report released on Tuesday.
Context & Ripple Effects
Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report has become a semiannual fixture, and its arc points one direction: the March 2007 edition documented a rise in data theft, data leakage, and targeted attacks tied to hackers chasing financial gain, and by August 2007 Computerworld was telling readers their data was less safe than two years earlier.
CNET's December 2007 look at the cybercrime economy supplied the frame for why volume keeps climbing — attack work had organized into a profit-seeking business. The 2008 figures released Tuesday extend that story: more holes disclosed and more malware in circulation, consistent with a criminal supply chain scaling output.
First-order effects
- Enterprises and consumers face a larger exposed surface right now — more reported vulnerabilities to patch and more malware variants to filter — which feeds directly into demand for the endpoint and gateway protection Symantec sells.
- Symantec's threat-report franchise again functions as both market research and marketing, keeping the company at the center of the security conversation it profits from addressing.
Second-order effects
- Rival security vendors face pressure to publish competing telemetry of their own, turning vendor-issued threat reports into a recurring competitive battleground for credibility and share of IT buyers' attention.
- Software vendors and IT departments absorb the cost side: each disclosed hole translates into patch cycles and hardening work, pushing budget toward vulnerability management rather than perimeter products alone.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, threat intelligence becomes a standing industry layer — vendors' semiannual data shaping how regulators, press, and buyers perceive risk — while the financial-gain motive documented in 2007 keeps pushing malware toward professionalized, monetized operations.
- Sustained growth in disclosed vulnerabilities pressures the disclosure ecosystem itself, raising questions about who certifies severity when the companies counting the threats are also selling the remedies.
The trend: Vendor-published threat intelligence is consolidating into a semiannual ritual that tracks, and amplifies, the shift of malware from mischief to organized financial crime.