Certain Areas More Prone To Malware

Security company Sophos have released their Dirty Dozen standings for countries that release spam, with the United Kingdom arriving in fourth place in spam output on the entire globe, at 4.6 percent. The United States, ranking in first place, dispenses 15.2 percent of all spam sent across the globe. Second-place finisher was India coming in at 7.7 percent and third-place finisher was Brazil with 5.5 percent of all spam delivered. In terms of continents, Europe delivers the most spam in the world with thirty five percent beating out Asia who comes in second place with 30.9 percent of all spam delivered. In this ranking, North America came in third place with only 18.9 percent.

The senior technology consultant Sophos, Graham Cluley, said, “Spam has been delivered through compromised European computer systems, as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Poland have moved up the rankings since the beginning of the year. Spam will move forward as a global concern as long as spammers make money. Criminals will continue as long as a small portion of users click on the links.” Graham suggested businesses and organizations pick up a more enhanced proactive approach in order to filter spam and enhance IT security so the problem in general is mitigated.

Within the United States, the Enigma Software Group keeps a real-time map that details which cities within the United States has changing malware infection rates. The cities of Los Angeles and New York are leading the path with total volume of malicious infections, but Atlanta has the highest rate of malware infection. Alvin Estevez, the CEO of Enigma, stated, “Malware has become sophisticated, as the greater risk to your computer system and personal data is growing. It isimportant to watch the areas the malware is performing the most damage and our Malware Tracker map assists us and all users as to what is happening.”

The Enigma map representation displays the overall infection rates of malware but also allows a viewer to drill down and display specific threats of malware. These displays can provide the top ten current threats as well. In a statement from Enigma, their map “unveiled a thirty day view of infections in the one hundred largest areas in the United States. New York City had the most infections because New York contains the most computers. Factor in the number of infections as a percentage of the city's population, New York lands near the bottom and Atlanta, Georgia on top.”

Other cities with the distinction of a high infection rate include Denver Colorado, Birmingham Alabama, Chesapeake Virginia, in Madison Wisconsin. Cities containing the lowest per capita infection of malware include Jersey City New Jersey, Detroit Michigan, Santa Ana California, Boise Idaho, and Memphis Tennessee. Estevez had this to add “It is hard for us to guess why or how a particular city is at the top or bottom of the list. Any time you have a city with ahigh amount of Internet connectivity as well as a large population of younger users, the resulting Internet traffic will be higher, therefore so will the risk for malware infections. Atlanta is a well Internet connected and relatively young city compared to others. The average age of the Altanta residents is five years less than the entire national average.”

It might be assumed that areas all over the globe with a larger set of Internet connectivity and also younger populations will be more likely to answer to malware attacks that take advantage of natural disasters and other scams involving identity theft and personal computers are compromised. By performing analysis of an infection rate of malware in a particular area you can also lead to an indication that more training in the area of security awareness is necessary. This way and greater number of companies and users, along with many network resources and infrastructures will have a greater chance of protection if they are located in an area of high per capita and infection of malware.

CISSP training courses exist for this very reason. Security awareness training and certification training from a respected source should be a requirement. K Alliance training covers many of these aspects including access control, application development security, environmental security, organizational security, security risk management, telecommunications, cryptography, and many more issues of information security.

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