Fighting Spyware and Adware in the Enterprise

Information Systems Security, July, 2005 by Gordon, Sarah

While obvious security threats like fast-spreading worms have a tendency to garner news headlines, other stealthy security risks threaten businesses every day. Increasing amounts of spyware and adware programs have the ability to facilitate the disclosure of business information and risk privacy, confidentiality, integrity, and system availability. Corporations usually accumulate a vault of information that could cause serious problems if it were shared with the wrong contacts or, even worse, taken. Spyware's evolution from simple cookies to a range of sophisticated user-tracking systems has left many businesses without the control over their proprietary data and operations.

A recent IDC survey identified spyware as the fourth greatest threat to enterprise security. Security...