Malware attacks are a growing concern amongst enterprises. It not only results in downtime but also poses the threat of data theft. In the second of this four part series on malware attacks on enterprises, we bring to you the implications of malware attacks on businesses.

Effects on organizations and businesses

There are very well known - attacks of Conficker, experienced from a lot of organizations, from the UK Parliament to Waikato DHB network. The virus first disables a number of Windows services, such as the Automatic Update, Security Center, Windows Defender and Windows Error Reporting. Microsoft continues to offer a reward of $250,000 for finding the creators of the worm.

Another incident was reported at the end of 2009. During Christmas, DDoS attacks took down the Web sites of Amazon and Walmart. Christmas shopping took a break because of attacks on the servers of Amazon,Walmart and Expedia. Although the situation was soon under control-, these attacks caused big losses for the affected companies, as the traffic increases for on-line shopping during the holidays season.

The attacks in CAT 2009 Online exam in India made it impossible for almost 4000 students to attend the test.There have been some recent and quite interesting DDOS attacks targeting miscellaneous banks in Russia. The attackers behind these incidents used a botnet spread across China and Russia in order to hammer down the banks' networks. Given the poor security measures implemented at the corporate level, the financial institutions had suffered major outages and managed to resume operation after almost a week.

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