Finjan confirms cybercrime revenues exceeding drug trafficking

Farnborough, United Kingdom, 26th March 2009: Testimony from AT&T's Chief Security Officer Edward Amoroso, in which he told a US Senate Commerce Committee that revenues from cybercrime - at $1 trillion annually - are now exceeding those of drug crime, have been confirmed by Finjan, the business Internet security expert.

"Our latest research suggests that, whilst the economic downturn is reducing the income of drug traffickers, cybercriminals are becoming ever more innovative in the ways they extract money from companies and individual," said Yuval Ben Itzhak, Finjan's Chief Technology Officer.

"In our Q1 2009 report on cybercrime, for example, we revealed that one single rogueware network are raking in $10,800 a day, or $39.42 million a year. If you extrapolate those figures across the many thousands of cybercrime operations that exist on the Internet at any given time, the results easily reach a trillion dollars," he added.

According to Ben-Itzhak, Finjan's Q1 2009 security trends report also revealed that traffic volume to compromised Web sites has increased significantly, so luring masses of potential buyers to rogueware offerings.

As we have reported many times in our quarterly reports, he said, cybercriminals keep on looking for improved methods to distribute their malware and rogueware.

And since they make money by trading stolen data or selling rogue software, they are always looking for new and innovative techniques all time, he explained.

"It's against this backdrop that we can confirm AT&T CSO Amoroso's testimony that cyber-security threats have increased significantly over the past five years, and have reached the point where they pose a significant threat to all organisations," he said.

“We have seen a trend of unemployed IT personnel finding new and easy income by purchasing and using Crimeware Toolkits that are sold by professional hackers. We believe that this was just the beginning of a wider trend that we will experience in 2009 and 2010. Having the large number of layoffs of IT professionals all around the world, especially in the USA, we expect a rising number of people willing to ‘give it a try’ and to get stolen credit card numbers, online banking accounts and corporate data that they can use to generate income,” he added."

Because of this, we are urging companies to constantly review their IT security defences and the ways they monitor their IT resources against all forms of incursion and data leakages. It's only with extreme vigilance that IT managers can reduce the risk of a serious cybercrime event causing severe fiscal damage to their firm," he added.

For more on Edward Amoroso's Senate testimony: http://preview.tinyurl.com/cpc2pa

For more on Finjan's Q1 2009 intelligence report: http://www.finjan.com/cybercrime_intelligence

Finjan MCRC specializes in the detection, analysis and research of web threats, including Crimeware, Web 2.0 attacks, Trojans and other forms of malware. Our goal is to be steps ahead of hackers and cybercriminals, who are attempting to exploit flaws in computer platforms and applications for their profit. In order to protect our customers from the next Crimeware wave and emerging malware and attack vectors, Finjan MCRC is a driving force behind the development of Finjan's next generation of security technologies used in our unified Secure Web Gateway solutions. For more information please also visit our info center and blog.

Secure Gateway provides organizations with a unified web security solution combining productivity, liability and bandwidth control via URL categorization, content caching and applications control technologies. Crimeware, malware and data leakage are proactively prevented via patented active real-time content inspection technologies and optional anti-virus modules. Powerful central management enables intuitive task-based policy management, excellent drill-down reporting capabilities and easy directory integration for all network implementation options. By integrating several security engines in a single dedicated appliance, Finjan’s comprehensive and integrated web security solution enables quick deployment, simplified management and reduction of costs. Business benefits include real-time web security (no patches or updates needed), lower total cost of ownership (TCO), cost savings in administration efforts, lower maintenance costs, and reduction in loss of productivity. Finjan's security solutions have received industry awards and recognition from leading analyst houses and publications, including Gartner, IDC, Butler Group, SC Magazine, eWEEK, CRN, ITPro, PCPro, ITWeek, Network Computing, and Information Security. With Finjan’s award-winning and widely used solutions, businesses can focus on implementing web strategies to realize their full organizational and commercial potential. For more information about Finjan, please visit: www.finjan.com.

Neil Stinchcombe, Eskenzi PR
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