Spyware and Implementing Network Security to Prevent it - Essay Example

Spyware may collect different types of information. Some variants attempt to track the websites a user visits and then send this information to an advertising agency. More malicious variants attempt to intercept passwords or credit card numbers as a user enters them into a web form or other application. The scourge of spyware is going to be here for quite a while, simply because the attacker make so much money from it. An attacker can make a dollar or more per month per infected system by using spyware to inject pop-up ads, Spam and other annoyances.

Therefore, attackers have a vested interest to constantly adapt their software and make it ever more stealthy and sticky. Additionally, the stakes are even higher if the attacker can steal credit card or bank account information. What weve seen in the past three years is the growth of a spyware industry that spins off millions of dollars. That money is often folded back into research and development for more malicious attacks. This R&D funding makes their software even more powerful and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

As spyware continues to threaten the stability of corporate infrastructures, its crucial to understand how this malicious software works and how to defend against it. This assignment is a compilation of resources that explain what spyware is, how it attacks and most importantly what you can to do to win the war on spyware. Spyware is any technology that aids in gathering information about a person or organization without their knowledge. On the Internet where it is sometimes called a spybot or tracking software, spyware is programming that is put in someones computer to secretly gather information about the user and relay it to advertisers or other interested parties.

Spyware can get in a computer as a software virus or as the result of installing a new program. Some common examples of spyware are CoolWebSearch (CWS), Gator