Blue Coat Technology Brief Sample

The recession that impacted the world economy in 2008 and continues into 2009 will create a number of opportunities for cybercriminals. Because recipients of spam that contain links to infected and malicious Web sites will be more receptive to certain kinds of spam -- job sites, mortgage offers, bailout news and the like -- expect an increase in campaigns focused on economy-related messages. There will be continued pressure on organizations to adopt Web 2.0 technologies, particularly in a soft economy.

Web 2.0 applications can provide IT departments with the ability to deploy new functionality at a low cost per user and with minimal up-front investment, and it allows them to maintain these tools at lower and more predictable costs. This is driving increasing use of hosted applications for email, CRM and a variety of Web-based applications—expect 2009 to see a significant increase in demand for hosted services of various types.

The Web will continue to supplant email as the primary threat vector for malware. Sophos has found that emails with infected attachments are much less of a threat today than they were just a few years ago: in 2005, for example, one in 44 emails contained an infected attachment, whereas in 2008 that figure had fallen to 1 in 714. However, spam—a growing proportion of which contains links to malicious or otherwise dangerous Web sites—continues to grow. At the same time, Web-based threats are on the increase and are a more serious threat than email-oriented malware in many organizations. Expect that trend to continue during 2009.