HP has identified a significant increase in the volume of organised cybercrime targeting data centers and networks, which can of course lead to financial and data loss.
HP’s new report titled "2010 Top Cyber Security Risks Report" revealed that while there were more attacks recorded in 2010, the number of discovered vulnerabilities remained relatively stable, but high.
The report indicates that while the majority of attacks are against known and patched security vulnerabilities, many high-profile attacks use new vulnerabilities before vendors issue fixes.
The company said that to combat both types of attacks, businesses and governments can reduce risk with improved security practices, by keeping their security systems up to date.
The report highlighted that there is a dramatic increase of Web exploit toolkits and these packaged attack frameworks are traded online, enabling attackers to access enterprise IT systems and steal sensitive data.
According to the report, Web exploit toolkits are growing as the weapon of choice by attackers due to ease of use and high success rate.
The report also identified third-party plug-ins to content management systems as a leading cause of Web application vulnerabilities.
Blog-hosting and online discussion forum applications, such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, are among the most frequently attacked systems.
HP DVLabs advanced security intelligence manager Mike Dausin said they have discovered that rather than investing resources to uncover new exploits, attackers are focused on current, unpatched vulnerabilities in web applications, social networking sites and Web 2.0 interfaces.
