News
Bots, Spyware Top Worry List for Federal IT Security
Bots and spyware top the list of security worries for federal technologies,
according to a survey of 200 federal information technology employees from Cisco
Systems.
The study, reviewed today at the FOSE Conference
and Exposition in Washington, found that 56 percent of those surveyed "were
kept up at night" worrying about bots and spyware.
Bots, also known as crawlers or spiders, are search engine programs that go
out on the Internet, follow links and read through pages to index the site in
a search engine.
Spyware secretly gathers information about a user while he/she navigates the
Internet. Spyware can gather information about e-mail addresses, passwords and
credit card numbers.
According to the September 2007 survey, 55 percent of respondents reported
security breaches as the second top worry for federal IT security. Inadequately
trained employees was next with 53 percent. Employee data loss came in fourth
with 51 percent, and citizen data loss was fifth at 50 percent.
Government agencies can leverage existing infrastructure to minimize exposure
to bots and spyware, said David Graziano, regional manager for security at Cisco.
Security features need to be built into an agency's architecture; inbound and
outbound filtering, host-based intrusion protection, anomaly monitoring and
policy enforcement should all be part of a federal security technology initiative,
he said.