Security news from McAfee Focus '08 Conference

[chuckk281]

I was at the McAfee Focus '08 Security Conference this last week. This was their first time doing this and there were about 1500 attendees. Lots of interesting sessions and discussion about the overall health of the security business. One of the keynotes was hosted by Dave DeWalt, CEO of McAfee where he had the Assistant Director of the FBI Cybercrime Division, Shawn Henry, discuss their view of cyber crime today. Shawn's main view on the cybercriminals of today is that they are 80-90% financially motivated rather than looking for fame. Much more sophisticated groups are now attacking companies to gain financial information and to make crime pay. And that members of the groups may be located in various countries and the laws from those countries are all different in how they deal with cybercriminals. Makes it much tougher to catch and prosecute them all. FBI is working with variuos problem countries in trying to eliminate and/or get them under common laws. Lots of interest in how to stop cybercrime end-to-end as there are a lot of point products out there today that do not interact with each other. The proliferation of new mobile devices is also another avenue for entry into corporate systems. Malware, spam, viruses, etc. have increased 4-5x what it was just 1 year ago. "Let's be save out there."