By Jim Tiller, Vice President, Security Professional Services, North America, BT Global Services

Jill’s right. Today’s hackers are business people. They look at opportunities that are out there and attack in stealth mode.  They pose one of the greatest threats to enterprises, as well as the government.

Let’s face it — organizations, public and private, do not want people to think or know that they were hacked.  Recently, Adobe and Google admitted being attacked as part of Operation Aurora.  But what about the other 30 or so companies that were affected?  Not one of them has come forward to admit their organizations were also part of that attack.  Why? Purely for self-preservation.  Either these companies want to do business in China or they don’t want consumers to know just how vulnerable their networks are, or both. 

The private sector as well as government is still struggling to understand hackers.  According to a Newsweek article, “… the Senate’s Sergeant at Arms office, Congress and other government agencies are now under cyberattack an average of 1.8 billion times a month, compared with an average of 8 million times a month in 2008.  Businesses are in the same situation.  One report suggests that downtime from a cyberattack already costs a company an estimated $6.3 million per day on average.”

Couple this with the fact that the art of hacking has changed dramatically with advancement in technology and the changing motivations of those who hack.  The threats that are most concerning are conducted by stealthy professionals and throngs of more motivated hackers working for hostile governments and organized crime.  Today’s hackers identify their targets and then, like piranhas, sink their teeth into the flesh of a company without letting go until they get exactly what they wanted.  All while, covering their tracks so they can go undetected until it is too late.

Has your organization identified who or why someone would hack into your system?  Are your security efforts designed to thwart that specific type of hack?