Cisco Security Report Sees Social Media Risk
Lovers and haters of the color-coded Department of Homeland Security Advisory System can now extend their passions toward Cisco’s Global ARMS Race Index, the networking giant’s attempt to convey the state of cybersecurity using the color spectrum. ARMS in this context stands for “Adversary Resource Market Share.”
On a scale of green — cyber attacks are barely noticeable — to red — the bad guys own the Internet and no connection can be trusted, Cisco’s 2009 Annual Security Report paints the current online environment in a light orange hue. That’s 7.2 on a scale of 1 to 10 for those who prefer numbers to a continuum of color.
Cisco characterizes the situation thus: “Enterprise networks are experiencing persistent infections. Consumer systems are infected at levels capable of producing consistent and alarming levels of service abuse.” Cisco does its best to find some rays of hope amid the gloom. It notes that vendors are patching like mad. That’s a bit like crowing about the number of combat medics in the field during a war.
From September through October 2009, Adobe, Cisco, Microsoft, and Oracle “released updates to patch more than 100 vulnerabilities in their respective products,” the report says. Not only that but a vulnerability exploited by the Conficker botnet was patched and both Firefox and Internet Explorer received security upgrades.
But as far as good news goes, that’s pretty anemic. Far more impressive is the bad news: While the number of vulnerabilities remained about the same in 2009 as it has been in recent years, “the exploit and attack threat levels increased by 57%.”