PC World’s security report for the year highlights some of the biggest threats to personal and network security we saw online this year, including new kinds of spam engineered to evade common filters, a more phishing attacks, crackers extorting site owners and companies by holding their data or websites for ransom. Among some of the most worrying issues this year were the increasing professional nature and complexity of the kinds of attacks against corporate and business targets, more and more phishing and the beginnings of business attempts to combat it, and more new spam-an issue that many technology analysts were already calling a fixed problem.
In the analysis, PC World looks at five of those top threats in more detail, from profitable cybercrime all the way to the perils of Windows Vista.