Blended threats rising, says Symantec

The research, which draws on the IT security firm's customer knowledge and monitoring systems, found that blended threats accounted for 54 per cent of the top 10 malicious code submissions during the second half of last year.

These threats, the company says, have caused widespread damage more quickly than ever before due to increased propagation speed, aided in part by improved bandwidth and decreased latency.

In the first half of 2003, says the report, only one sixth of the companies analysed reported a serious security breach. In the second half of the year, this figure tripled, to 50 per cent, mainly due to the volumes of worms in circulation.

www.symantec.com