There seems to be a groundswell of hacking activity recently. From the Epsilon breach that touched dozens of major U.S. companies and their millions of customers and RSA replacing its customers' SecurID tokens after attacks on several defense contractors to Sony sites getting pummeled by hackers on a regular basis--all within the last few months.
"I truly don't think there's a higher instance of hacking right now. I think there's been a wave of media coverage," said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer of BT and one of the most respected security experts around. "We saw the same thing with shark attacks. It's not that there are more shark attacks. It's that they made the news when people started looking for them."
No one can really say if there are more attacks happening. Reports indicate
that the number of breaches is as can be expected. But those statistics are based only on incidents that are reported; there are untold numbers that happen all the time that no one knows about except the attacker and, eventually, the victim.
But it's clear that more attacks are bubbling to the surface lately. And they are various types of attacks, not just the data breaches that expose sensitive consumer personal data and thus trigger state disclosure laws.
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