Ex-Ford employee security breach is tip of recession iceberg

"As personally identifiable information, credit cards and financial information become more commoditised on the black market, we're going to start seeing more attacks focused on sensitive data – such as Ford's design documents," says Brian Contos, Imperva's chief security strategist. And he adds: "Insiders abound regardless of the state of the economy. However, in difficult economic times the number of insider attacks is known to increase." Contos makes the point that insiders have two things outsiders don't: trust and access. "This makes barriers to committing the crime less of a technical issue and more of an ethical one. Criminals know this, and they know the return on investment of recruiting an insider is better than an external attack: why hack when you can recruit," he asks. "Unfortunately the actions Xiang Dong Yu (aka Mike Yu) aren't that dissimilar from other high profile incidents where millions of dollars worth of intellectual property were stolen and given to competitors," explained Contos.