As computer-hacking attacks were executed one after another, causing great damage worldwide in recent months, the online security of over half of all enterprises around the globe remain doubtful, IBM Taiwan Corp said yesterday.
"Even though almost 99 percent of companies are equipped with firewalls or anti-virus software, over 50 percent of them could still face the threat of online security breaches," IBM Taiwan's segment-services manager Tom Ting (
Damage
Ting cited several significant hacker attacks in the first half of this year that led to serious damage to both corporate and individual customers, including the high-profile online invasion in the US of CardSystems Solutions Inc last month that caused information to be leaked from 40 million accounts and the fraudulent use of 68,000 customers' credit cards.
However, online security breaches appeared to be on the decline, while the number of phishing attacks shot up by 226 percent in May. Incidences of e-mail viruses increased by 33 percent month-on-month. This means one in 32.2 e-mails contained some form of virus or trojan attack, according to IBM's monthly Global Business Security Index Report.
Weak point
The report also indicated that Web applications are the weakest point in online security, as application hacking is how 90 percent of targeted systems are exploited. The report warned that the pharming of educational institutions' systems is a more full-scale and destructive form of online security breach than phishing.
The mushrooming online security breaches brought a loss of US$5 billion to consumers and damages of US$48 billion to enterprises, according to figures provided by IBM Taiwan.
Increases
Taiwan meanwhile is also suffering increasing online security breaches, as police investigated over 5,000 offenses in cyberspace last year, up from just over 3,000 cases in 2003 and 12 times as many as three years ago, according to the company.
As a result, Taiwan's information security market is expected to grow to US$44.3 million this year, up from US$39.6 million last year, and to increase by a compound annual growth rate of 13.2 percent to US$73.7 million in 2009, according to a report released by International Data Corp (IDC) in May.
IDC predicted that the services of the Security Operation Center (SOC), offered by online security-service providers, could become increasingly popular among corporate customers.
Growing demand
Banking on the growing demand, IBM Taiwan started offering the SOC service in Taiwan in April after Big Blue started the service in the US five years ago.
"We currently have two corporate customers, including a semi-official organization in Hsinchu and a manufacturer in Tainan, and expect to expand the number to five or six by the year's end," Ting said.
As the government has become increasingly aware of online security protection and set up an internal information-security mechanism after several hacker attacks, the company that has been looking after part of the Presidential Office's information security would now also make government outsourcing its business focus, Ting said.
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