Cybercriminals perfecting targeted attacks

Cyber criminals are changing tact, abandoning traditional mass spam attacks, and launching personalised attacks with a greater financial impact on targeted organisations.
A new security reports by Cisco shows:
• Returns from mass email-based attacks declined by more than 50 percent from US$1.1 billion in June 2010 to $500 million in June 2011.
• Mass spam volumes plummeted from 300 billion daily spam messages to just 40 billion between June 2010 and June 2011.
• There is an increase in spear phishing and personalised scams and malicious attacks.
• Spear phishing attacks have increased threefold, while scams and malicious attacks have increased fourfold.
• The overall cost of targeted attacks to organisations worldwide is $1.29 billion annually.