Gambling sites and pornographic content are often the source of all kinds of Trojans and computer viruses. However, according to the 2013 Annual Security Report of the Cisco company, the greatest threats to the security of Internet users are not found there, but in much more common websites such as social networks, online shopping pages and major search engines.
According to this study, legitimate shopping pages are 21 times more likely to contain malware than fake pages , and online advertising has a malicious potential 182 times greater than porn pages. In addition, in the last year malware threats on Android devices have increased, despite the fact that they still account for only 0.5 percent of all Internet security threats. According to company data, the United States is the country with the highest number of malware detected, followed by Russia and Denmark.
According to the authors of the report, the challenges that Internet security professionals will face in the coming years are great, as the way they use the network is changing. According to a previous study by the company, a high number of workers combine the use of their mobile devices with the desktop computer and tablets, carrying out work tasks from anywhere, and combining them with their online visits related to leisure and life personal.
In addition, the amount of information that flows through corporate networks and service providers is growing day by day and machine-to-machine connections, also called M2M, are increasing, which makes the vulnerability of companies to hacker attacks are increasing . “Hackers know that today the boundaries between personal and work life have been blurred, and the malware that we find when browsing pages widely used as search engines, online businesses or social networks does not affect only the individual, but also organizations for which we work ”, has explained John N. Stewart, vice president of the Cisco company.
