The Georgia Institute of Technology, one of the nation's premiere research universities, ranked seventh among U.S. News & World Report's top public universities, announced the report of Emerging Cyber Threats for 2008. The report outlines the top five areas of security concern and risk for consumer and enterprise Internet users for the coming year.

According to the GTISC forecasting the five key areas in which cyber security threats are expected to increase evolve:
• Web 2.0 and Client-Side Attacks – including social networking attacks and new attacks that
will exploit Web 2.0 vulnerabilities
• Targeted Messaging Attacks – including Instant Messaging attacks and malware propagation
via online video-sharing
• Botnets – specifically the spread of botnet attacks to wireless and peer-to-peer networks
• Threats Targeting Mobile Convergence – including voice spam, vishing and smishing
• Threats to Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Systems – evolving and varied threats in
this emerging technology sector

Mustaque Ahamad, director of GTISC says: “As newer and more powerful applications enabled by technologies like Web 2.0 continue to grow, and converged communications applications increasingly rely on IP-based platforms, new challenges will arise in safeguarding these applications and the services they rely on. The GTISC Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2008 highlights those areas of greatest risk and concern, particularly as continued convergence of enterprise and consumer technologies is expected over the coming year. We wish to thank the esteemed members of the GTISC Security Summit panel who assisted us with the creation of this report.”

The GTISC Security Summit on Emerging Cyber Security Threats and Countermeasures Summit was attended by more than 200 corporate executives, industry leaders and technologists from across the country It was keynoted by Dr. Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google. The research and the discussion aimed to educate the audience on the proliferation of cyber threats, including those listed in the report, and highlighted possible countermeasures to safeguard the user and business communities.