IBM Midyear Security Report: A Bad Year That's Getting Worse

Time flies when you're having fun, and flies even faster when the bad guys are having their "fun." Already more than halfway through 2008 and a new security report let's us know in detail just how insecure a year it is.The X-Force Mid-Year Trend Statistics Report from IBM Security Systems is out, and it makes for compellingly grim reading.

But not necessarily quick reading: the report's a honker that comes in at 85 pages (there's a download button on the report homepage link.)

Among the key bits:

Web sites and Web applications are the targets of choice today, with SQL injection attacks on the increase.

More than 3500 vulnerabilities were reported in the first six months of 2008; up 5 percent or so from last year.

Open source apps are increasingly being targeted.

Blog and social networking sites are homes to more and more malware.

Spam has gone back to bad old basics, mass mailing malicious urls rather than images; not sure if this is good news or not -- bad urls in spam worked before and evidently still do.

Every one of these threats and threat strategies affects small and midsize businesses same as they do bigbiz: small comfort in that, I know.

This is another of those good, detailed reports that may not tell you anything you don't already know (or suspect) but which presents its findings well, thoroughly and clearly. Worth reading, worth passing along -- and worth paying attention to.