The Role of Organized Crime in Cyberspace

Did anyone catch the quick reference to cyber crime in this past week's The Sopranos episode? Chris pulls himself away from a few lovely ladies at the Bada Bing to meet with some of his foreign contacts exchanges a thumb drive for cash. "It was a good week," he said alluding to stealing lots of credit cards.

Hmmm. Cyber crime makes the mainstream, eh? At least now my Mom will have some idea of what I do. That reference was lost on me until I read a recent article in eWeek called "Return of the Web Mob." (link here) This article revisits the role of organized crime in many of the attacks we see everyday, including phishing and lots of other nastiness.

The reason I bring this up is more cautionary than anything else. I also mentioned in yesterday's TDI that spam was here to stay as long as folks keep clicking on the links and being compromised. We cannot let down our guard and we have to focus more in user education. We cannot keep everyone from being vulnerable to these attacks, but we sure need to keep it out of our enterprise and home.

I'm giving a lot of thought to this end user education problem. I'm interested to hear from anyone that thinks they've solved the problem. What kind of training programs do you put your users through to keep them from doing stupid things? I'll keep everyone posted on what I find out.