December 15, 2008
Threat: • noun 1 a stated intention to inflict injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone. 2 a person or thing likely to cause damage or danger. 3 the possibility of trouble or danger.
http://www.securityfocus.com/
http://www.kaspersky.com/
http://www.mcafee.com/us/
http://www.trendmicro.com.au/au/home/index.html
I’ve never paid to much attention to the various “Threat Levels” on the vendor sites. Surely the threat level is always “High”? If it’s ever not deemed that, are we assuming at that single point in time we’re secure and under no threat at all?
Warning…Warning…Warning…….
There is admittedly very little definition as to what the threat level really means. Is there code running that tabulates some metric and bumps it up when necessary, or, most likely, is it just some person or committee of people who decide, “Now is the time!” (Notwithstanding self-serving reasons to keep everyone a’twitter…)
I would hope that a “green” or “low” threat level is considered normal. Normal being a state where there are threats, but we know/manage/accept them. And bumping up higher to some state above normal would take some event or new threats that need our attention to some degree. But that is me and I certainly can’t attest to someone else’s measures…
I tend to like what SANS/Dshield give since it has some basis in measurements, but is always accompanied by a post explaining why it changed.
It is the Internet we are talking about where anything is likely at anytime so if I had to classify it, ‘normal’ would mean ‘high’ and anything higher than that, we’ll it’s pretty much happening. (Which at all times to someone, it definitely is).
From Donal. Thanks for the link mate:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/irldexter/3111470079/sizes/o/
D’s site:
http://bsdosx.blogspot.com/