Security dominates 2008 IT agenda

Will 2008 see the first serious security exploit in corporate VoIP networks? Or will network security breakdowns cast a pall on the upcoming presidential elections and Olympic games? Will users' Web 2.0 forays open the malware floodgates?

Experts say security concerns will dominate the network landscape in 2008 whether we like it or not. But it won't be all gloom and doom. Faster wireless LANs are on the way, enterprise-class open source applications are multiplying, and Google is continuing to muscle its way into new markets -- raising the bar for competitors along the way.

Here are some of the highlights of what enterprise IT teams can expect in the new year.

Malware of Olympic proportions

Two high-profile events -- the 2008 Olympics in China and the U.S. presidential elections -- will trigger a stream of exploits, security experts warn. 

Olympics-related Web sites and networks are potential places to infect people, says Dan Hubbard, vice president of security research at Websense. “The 2008 Olympics will be used as a lure for fraud, too. Massive amounts on an international scale,” Hubbard says.

Also on tap for 2008 are Storm-like botnets with decentralized command-and-control structures that make them much tougher to shut down, says Craig Schmugar, researcher at McAfee.

“Storm is a trend setter,” Schmugar says of the infamous botnet that traces back to a network attack launched one year ago. “A lot of the spam we see is coming across Storm-compromised machines.”

McAfee also is expecting a wave of malware parasitics, which look for specific files and embed themselves. To combat infection by parasitics, “you have to isolate the parasitic code within the host code,” Schmugar notes. “If it overwrites the good code, you may never get it back.”

Click to see: Timeline of what to expect in q1 of 2008

VoIP not a target . . . for now

One security threat that may not materialize in 2008 is exploits against VoIP systems.

It's not that the danger isn't real -- it is. VoIP is susceptible to the many exploits that networks in general are heir to, including denial-of-service attacks and buffer overflows. In addition, there are many voice-specific attacks and threats. For instance, two protocols widely used in VoIP -- H.323 and IAX -- have been shown to be vulnerable to sniffing during authentication, which can reveal passwords that can later be used to compromise a voice network. Implementations of SIP, an alternative VoIP protocol, can leave VoIP networks open to unauthorized transport of data.