Viruses/Worms News

Security firms join working group to fight web threats

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Several prominent web security companies are joining together to share information and resources to fight the growing threat of malware on the web. Assembled under the IEEE Standards Association, the working group is called the Industry Connections Security Group (ICSG).

AVG Technologies, McAfee, Microsoft, Sophos, Symantec and Trend Micro are the initial members of ICSG, which will seek to engage security vendors, banks, internet service providers, educational institutions and government agencies to promote better security on the web.

The group will develop, document and promote proposals for enhancing security, toward the goal of producing consensus approaches and perhaps fueling new IEEE standards.

"We've seen a whole ecosystem develop around threats to computer security," said Jeff Green, ICSG chair and senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs.

Green said the security industry has fragmented itself among various siloed efforts designed to solve very specific problems, such as phishing and spyware. ICSG would seek to more comprehensively address the security problems.

Threats have increased from 125,000 unique pieces of malware in 2006 to 1.5 million in 2008 and 1.2 million in the first half of 2009 alone, according to McAfee.