There is an unfortunate by-product of effective inbound marketing. According to a recent report from Symantec®, web-based attacks increased last year by 36%, with over 4,500 new attacks each day. What’s more, mobile vulnerabilities continue to rise.
Internet Security Threat Report, Volume 17, can be found here.
One of the unfortunate by-products of an effective inbound marketing campaign is with it’s intended outcome- to be found on the web. As your company or brand builds credibility and exposure you will likely gain the attention of, shall we say, nefarious individuals with malicious intentions. It is it uncommon to see an increase in soliciting cold-call activity, SPAM, and even denial-of-service attacks because your company looks credible and important.
The threat of data and identity loss is growing at a terrifying pace and has spread well beyond large corporate severs and has become an invasion of many SOHO computers and networks. Last year 50% of targeted attacks were aimed at companies with less than 2,500 employees.
Some of the statistics that this report illustrates include:
- In 2011 there were 232 million identities exposed!
- Symantec reports blocking a total of over 5.5 billion malware attacks in 2011, an 81% increase over 2010.
- Web based attacks increased by 36% with over 4,500 new attacks each day.
- 403 million new variants of malware were created in 2011, a 41% increase of 2010.
- SPAM volumes dropped by 13% in 2011 over rates in 2010.
- 39% of malware attacks via email used a link to a web page.
- Mobile vulnerabilities continued to rise, with 315 discovered in 2011.
You are more likely to be infected by malware placed on a legitimate web site than one created by a hacker. Make sure you have adequate protection. Consider going beyond a local external hard drive (if you do not you must!) and utilize an online backup solution- in our geographical area Fastteks®, a national on-site computer service provider we use, is marketing an affordable service that works behind the scenes automatically. We are going to deploy this solution shortly.
Also make certain that wireless networks are encrypted and private.
The report has a robust, albeit it lengthy, list of best practices that should be considered, if you want to avoid the downtime and loss of information many attacks result in. And don’t let a hacker diminish the great results of your inbound marketing efforts!
