17% of companies with more than 100 employees have discovered that, in their networks over the past 12 months, spyware has been present, most commonly in the form of keyloggers.
According to American security firm Websense, this figure indicates that the growth rate of keyloggers in organizations has reached nearly 50%. “Even with systems equipped with the latest antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall solutions, we still observe an ongoing increase in the spyware community,” stated Joel Camissar, an expert at Websense.
Spyware is considered one of the most serious security issues. It infiltrates computers without users’ knowledge, monitoring web browsing habits and stealing personal information, passwords, and more from PCs. The U.S. Trade Commission has announced that it will soon implement measures to penalize organizations that distribute such software.
One reason for the rapid growth of spyware is the availability of spyware toolkits being sold openly online. “In April 2005, there were 77 password-stealing applications released online. In March of this year, we identified at least 197 tools. The number of websites hosting keylogger software also increased tenfold, from 260 to 2,157 during the same period,” Camissar noted.
Websense’s survey also revealed that company leaders are not very confident that employees can distinguish between legitimate websites and fraudulent, phishing sites. “47% of managers confirmed that their employees opened phishing emails and could not accurately identify which sites were trustworthy,” Camissar added.
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