The US Army and Marine Corps’ official Counterinsurgency Field Manual opens with a quote that could easily serve as a motto for cybersecurity professionals: “This is a game of wits and will. You’ve got to be learning and adapting constantly to survive.”
General Peter J. Schoomaker was describing how to confront asymmetric military and political threats such as those posed by small, armed groups trying to overthrow governments or destabilize societies. But he might just as well have been framing the challenge of defending IT systems against cybersecurity threats such as those posed by Trojans, worms and viruses.
BSA member company Symantec last year identified 2,895,802 new malicious code signatures in its Global Internet Security Threat Report, a 71 percent increase from 2008. Think about that: nearly 2.9 million (more…)