COUNTERPANE THREAT INTELLIGENCE IDENTIFIES FINANCIAL INDUSTRY AS THE VERTICAL MOST EXPOSED TO TARGETED SCANS AND PROBING ATTACKS

CTO Bruce Schneier Warns Profit Driven Criminal Attacks Are More Dangerous To Organizations that Store Sensitive Data

Mountain View, Calif., November 15, 2005 - Counterpane Internet Security, Inc., the world's leading protector of networked information, today released 2005 Attack Trends: Beyond The Numbers by Bruce Schneier, Counterpane's founder and CTO. In his essay, Mr. Schneier provides insights into security attack data that has been monitored and analyzed by the Counterpane Intelligence Committee for the period of January 1, 2005 to October 31, 2005.

"Over the past few years, we have seen hacking transform from a hobbyist activity to a criminal one. The new criminal attacks have a more focused goal: profit. This difference makes the new attackers more dangerous and potentially more damaging," Mr. Schneier observed. "The financial industry is most at risk – more than half of the targeted scans detected by Counterpane happened in the financial industry," he added.

Key Findings:

• Technology companies experienced the most security events, however the majority of these events are system errors which typically do not pose criminal risk to these firms;
• Although the financial industry ranks second highest in attacks, it is actually the most vulnerable to criminal activity—of the thirteen major vertical markets tracked by Counterpane, approximately 50% of all targeted scans detected by Counterpane occurred within the financial industry;
• Targeted attacks against networks, unauthorized access to information, and theft of proprietary information significantly increased;
• Trojans and other malware designed to "own" computers significantly increased;
• Criminals are now using bot networks for profit-making ventures;

Conclusion: Criminals are more highly motivated, better funded, less risk-averse, and more tenacious. Damaging attacks like Trojan viruses and bot networks are expected to increase. All categories of organizations are at risk, but the financial industry is expected to remain the highest risk vertical in the near-term.

Companies will need to assess their existing security solutions to ensure that they are protected against more sophisticated attacks and employ strategic security solutions that mitigate risk and improve compliance and corporate governance regulations.

For a copy of the full report, please visit http://www.counterpane.com/cgi-bin/attack-trends2.cgi.

About Counterpane

Counterpane is the world's leading protector of networked information -- the inventor of outsourced security monitoring and the foremost authority on effective mitigation of emerging IT threats. With the most comprehensive view available of global information security events, Counterpane offers customers the earliest possible warning of internal or external threats to their information security and availability, as well as the expert counsel required to successfully mitigate such threats. Counterpane's managed service model and technology products provide information-intensive organizations the security they require to collaborate with ever-increasing numbers of partners, customers, suppliers, investors and government regulators. The company is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif.

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