Technorati Tag - Computer Security

With the RSA conference held last week in San Francisco the web has been on fire with the latest in reports on computer threats and malware.  Symantec also recently released the annual Internet Security report stating that there has been a 468% increase of threats from 2006 to 2007. At a time when the focus is on computer security I began to wonder whether the general public actually has any interest. I decide to use Google trends to analyze what the masses were searching for in terms of security.  Both from the prevention side as well as the attack side.  I was surprised by my results.

I chose the search terms to be rather general, focusing on the script kiddies and the general consumers.  Most of your experienced criminals will not rely on Google to find the latest information.  They would rely on the security mailing lists and private group sites for their information. Here are my results.

Hacking


Hacking had a huge peek in 2004, when Netsky and Mydoom had been running rampant.  Since then the searches have slowly decreased with some minor up ticks, even though the number of threats has dramatically increased.  Much of this is from the reduction in main stream media covering the term hacking as well as the public becoming desensitized to such headlines.

Antivirus

This time we see a similar pattern.  A huge spike in 2004 and then a gradual decrease until it basically leveled off in 2008.

Exploits

Again the same pattern

Spam

Once again the same pattern.

What does this mean?
Possibly nothing, but we can all agree that the threats are real, but that doesn’t mean the public is listening. By many of the graphs we can determine that the public’s interest is entirely driven by the main stream media hyping the situations.  Yet, in the spam search data we notice that even though the number of media reports has slightly increase there is almost no reflection in the search traffic.  Perhaps there has been a desensitizing to the topic by the public.

Take a minute out of your day to run a few queries your self.  I am pretty sure you will be surprised by the results. If you have some interesting search comparisons send them to me.

About the Author
Blake Wiedman has been in the technology industry for 10 years. Serving in the United States Air force and working as a security assessor for the banking and financial industry. Blake is currently working as the Head of Technology Infrastructure for a financial firm.
You can contact Blake at: gso.gsecur@gmail.com