About 52% of IT specialists believe that enterprise networks will be increasingly targeted by hack attacks, posing serious challenge to IT administrators, according to a survey conducted by B2B International in July 2012.
One third of those surveyed believe that sooner or later their corporate network could face a targeted cyber-attack.
Targeted attacks would be the third most likely threat in the coming days, posing challenge before the IT specialists to defend their infrastructure – servers, workstations, corporate mobile devices.
Amidst reports of hackers using sophisticated malwares as cyber weapons, only 27% have heard about Stuxnet, and 13% – about Duqu.
The survey found that only 31% of those surveyed know about Trojans designed to steal user data -names such as SpyEye and ZeuS.
B2B International carried out the survey before the Madi targeted attack sample was detected, which targeted the infrastructure of engineering companies, governmental organisations, banks and academic institutions in the Middle East.
Madi relies on social engineering techniques to spread. It uses attractive images and confusing themes embodied in PowerPoint Slide Shows, containing the embedded Madi trojan downloaders.
Once it is clicked an "Activated Content" PowerPoint enables executable content within the spearphish attachments to run automatically affecting the system.
Earlier this year, security researchers had uncovered a massive cyber attack that attempted to steal data from Middle Eastern countries and has been operating undetected for up to two years.
The survey was carried out in partnership with Kaspersky Lab covering IT professionals working for large and medium-sized businesses.