Here's a sobering statistic: One in five of us will be victims of a cyberattack, which are occurring at an astounding rate of every quarter of a second.
Following up on our recent story, security software company Symantec held an event in the Meatpacking District of New York called the Black Market. Invitees were taken on a 45 minute tour of a "cyber bazaar and operations center" that explained the rising cyberthreats. Symantec also offer a first look at the new Norton Internet Security 2010, which went on sale September 9.
One of the biggest new features of the Internet security software is a technology Symantec calls Quorum. It essentially checks a process or application that is running and compares it to a database of user information that is constantly updated to determine whether it's a familiar application like Microsoft Word. If it isn't, then the software might check how many people are using it before turning it over to typical heuristics detection for known viruses. Users are warned if Symantec can't determine the authenticity of the application.
Another neat feature that Symantec will offer only through a link connected to its Web site is a tool that calculates how risky your Web-browsing behavior might be, then estimates what a cybercriminal might pay for your online identity (hint: Americans are worth nearly as much as Europeans in the cyberattack world).
Some readers of the magazine story suggested Symantec is resorting to fear tactics to sell more software. The rising threats certainly seem real and are so sobering that the FBI deemed it important enough to attend Symantec's event to highlight the issue.
This article was first published as a blog post on Businessweek.com.
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