When you look at the evolution of cyber crime, it is clear that day-by-day, businesses and consumers are facing even more serious threats to their security: phreaking, hacking, viruses, worms, identity theft -- what's next?

Before looking at what’s next, we must take a look at what’s now. One of the more troubling aspects of network security is that threats change well ahead of IT’s ability, or sometimes willingness, to adopt new measures. First a threat emerges and then the IT community responds. By then, the bad guys are already looking for a new weakness to exploit. There may actually be hundreds or even thousands of hackers looking for new ways to penetrate perimeter defenses or operating system loopholes. Once an exploitable weakness is found, the methods to take advantage of it are distributed and the race is on for IT to plug the hole.

Previously, the back and forth battle between hackers and IT departments was led by a group of disconnected loners on the hacker side of the fence. Typically under resourced and by their very nature secretive, these hackers went after whatever targets of opportunity they could find. Tips, tricks and best-practices were shared, but hacking was more of a social function than a directed attempt to accomplish a mission objective.

Unfortunately there is a very troubling trend emerging in cyber crime; a trend that may actually tip the scales in favor of the hackers. The hackers are uniting and forming organized groups. These groups are well funded and are staffed with large teams who may have higher skill sets than your IT department. They are likely going after a specific target and have a project plan with a goal and milestones along the way.

So who are these criminals? More importantly, what do they want and what can you do to stop them?

Organized Crime

Forget about Tony Soprano and his stranglehold on the Sanitation Workers’ Union. The gangster you need to be worried about is Sergi Ivanov and his band of Romanian hackers. Over the past few years, Eastern Europe has emerged as the epicenter for identity theft. Through spear phishing, database cracking and a variety of other methods, these groups are stealing your customers’ credit card numbers, social security numbers and mother’s maiden names. Stolen in bulk or one at a time, this information is sold on the black market for a high profit. There is even an eBay of sorts for stolen credit card numbers.