Looking ahead, the X-Force Research and Development team has identified some key trends to watch for in the future, including:

Cloud Computing — As an emerging technology, security concerns remain a hurdle for organizations looking to adopt cloud computing. As organizations transition to the cloud, IBM recommends that they start by examining the security requirements of the workloads they intend to host in the cloud, rather than starting with an examination of different potential service providers. Gaining a good understanding of the needs and requirements first will help organizations take a more strategic approach to adopting cloud services.

Virtualization – As organizations push workloads into virtual server infrastructures to take advantage of ever increasing CPU performance, questions have been raised about the wisdom of sharing workloads with different security requirements on the same physical hardware. X-Force’s vulnerability data shows that 35 percent of vulnerabilities impacting server class virtualization systems affect the hypervisor, which means that an attacker with control of one virtual system may be able to manipulate other systems on the same machine. This is a significant data point when architecting virtualization projects.

Read more: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-x-force-report-reveals-global-security-threats-have-reached-record-levels-101460029.html

Gee Thanks! I’ve been working out! …..oh wait a minute! What video??? CLICK!!!!

That was probably the script the culprit had in mind …and who knows how many times it played out.

I received the following message in my email inbox earlier from a cousin on Facebook.

It was so obviously malicious. Never mind the spelling issues. That is a trick typically used to get by email filters. My first reaction was to log in to Facebook and verify that it was indeed the source. I was reminded of an article I read about a similar fake LinkedIN email attack. In this case, the message was right there with a slight difference. The link now was more obvious.

One of those shortened bit.ly links that could lead you anyway. Without clicking the link, I clicked “reply” asking ” Did you send this?” . I already knew the answer but hey!  I immediately got the following response from one of the sender’s friends.

The plot thickens…

I sent the cousin a message advising a change of Facebook credentials. The message was apparently sent to many other users.  I’ve read and blogged about compromised Facebook account being used to spread malware and/or lure users to malicious sites but this is my first such experience. I’m not the average Facebook user though, since I only use it to cross-post blog updates.  I didn’t have to time to investigate what’s on the other side of that bit.ly link but just thought I’d share the experience.

Beware fellow Facebook users!