IT Execs Seek Weapons to Fight Spyware

Computerworld - Tools designed to fight off a spyware "epidemic" are expected to get close scrutiny from corporate users at this week's RSA Conference in San Francisco.

Spyware, which was a low-priority item on many IT security agendas a year ago, has quickly evolved from an annoyance to a substantial security and support burden, users and analysts said.

"Spyware has truly become an epidemic," said Lloyd Hession, chief security officer at Radianz, a New York-based provider of telecommunications services to financial services companies. "I see it as a much bigger threat to productivity and privacy [than worms and viruses are]."

In a report to be released this week, Forrester Research Inc. predicts that 65% of companies will either purchase or upgrade antispyware software this year, making it the most popular security technology of 2005. The report is based on a survey of 200 security managers.

Market research firm IDC, meanwhile, predicted that the antispyware business will grow from $12 million in 2003 to $305 million in 2008.

"Spyware has risen to fourth on the list of threats that security managers are most concerned about," trumping issues like spam and identity theft, said David Friedlander, the author of the Forrester report.

The term spyware refers to programs that quietly gather information about a person's browsing habits, and sometimes confidential data, and relay it to advertisers and other parties. Many spyware programs, such as "adware" applications, are used by legitimate companies, but many illegal ones are used to log keystrokes, steal confidential information and redirect browsers.

Daunting Numbers

The sheer number of spyware programs finding their way onto corporate desktops is a major cause for concern, say users and analysts.

Tim Powers, a senior network engineer at Southwire Co. in Carrollton, Ga., estimated that 70% of the electric cable maker's 1,600 systems are infected with spyware.

The majority of the problems caused by spyware have been performance-related, involving PC slowdowns, freezes and crashes, he said. But the potential for data loss from such programs is a real threat, he said. "Spyware is the biggest threat we have today, and it causes more problems with the operation of a PC than viruses do," said Powers.

Spyware programs can be so difficult to dispose of that the only option is to "reimage the system," said Robert Olson, a systems administrator at Uline Inc., a Waukegan, Ill.-based distributor of packing and shipping materials.

"We were spending hours trying to diagnose and solve the problem and would usually end up just rebuilding the system," said Olson, who recently installed antispyware software from Webroot Software Inc. in Boulder, Colo.