TrustMeSecurity.com

The loss of roughly half the population of the UK’s personal information on a CD sent through the mail prompted EnterpriseITPlanet.com writer Drew Robb to compile his list of the top 10 security trends. Not surprisingly he touches on some of the big holes that TrustMe’s engineers are tackling. Some of the highlights:

1. Data Breaches Are on the Rise

“High-profile data breaches underscored the importance of data loss prevention technologies and strategies,” says Oliver Friedrichs, director of security response at Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, CA. “Most breaches are due to physical loss of equipment. Theft or loss of computer or other data storage medium made up 46 percent of all data breaches.”

3. Spam Has Reached Record Levels

Surprisingly, Symantec reports that spam was on a steady decline for the first half of the year. Unfortunately, it rebounded in June and hit an all-time high in October. This meant that 70.5 percent of all email was spam. Of that, image spam fell while PDF spam grew significantly. Greeting-card spam was a new annoyance, and was responsible for delivering the Storm Worm malware (also known as Peacomm).

“E-card spam had become particularly virulent and the trend continued for the latter part of 2007,” says Friedrichs. “These evolved to include different hooks intended to lure users into following malicious URLs containing malware.”

5. Phishing — More People Taking the Bait

Phishing continued to be big last year. Symantec reports an 18% increase in unique phishing sites.

“In September, we observed 18,424 unique phishing URLs,” says Friedrichs . “Banks continue to be the most phished sector with 52% of these URLs spoofing financial institutions.

6. Trusted Brands are Being Exploited

Attackers have moved away from actively seeking out their intended victims. They prefer to wait for their targets to come to them by compromising trusted sites and applications. When someone visits that site or uses that application, the attacker gains entry to the victim’s computer. Social networking sites, in particular, have proven a fruitful area for hackers because they give access to large numbers of people. Such sites are also prone to various other vulnerabilities.

Read all 10 trends by clicking here.