Thieves are pretty well-known for their craftiness. Case in point, the just-issued Websense 2010 Threat Report indicates that data thieves are getting more creative, deploying a combination of phishing, phony social networking messages, and compromised websites to make increasingly elaborate efforts to steal personal information. Here’s the scoop.

The findings in the threat report were gathered by special analysis of Websense’s prided ThreatSeeker network, which the company says scans 40 million websites per hour looking for malicious code — not to mention 10 million emails for “unwanted content.” And Websense’s press release says that the conclusion reached is that “cybercriminals and their blended attacks are having a field day taking advantage of security gaps left open by legacy technologies like firewalls, antivirus, and simple URL blockers.”

Here are some of those key statistics they found, taken directly from Websense’s press release:

Takeaways from that list include a trend towards politically-motivated cybercrime and savvy scammers who get people to click on bogus breaking news stories on their social media profiles. It’s a scary Internet out there, and an MSP in the know has plenty of opportunity to upsell security services to clients who probably aren’t as worried as they should be.

The press release concludes with a call to arms. Enterprises are putting themselves at harm with “scattershot” security measures that leave them open to these kinds of attacks. Instead, Websense calls on IT pros to migrate to a unified security architecture (like theirs, of course) that leaves no stone unturned when it comes to rooting out evil.

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