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"Our research is an ongoing effort to dynamically adapt our products and services to provide our customers with comprehensive security for their data and networks," said Boris Yanovsky, vice president of software engineering at SonicWALL. "The results of this report highlight the cyclical nature of cyber-security threats, from both weekly and yearly perspectives. Enterprises need to be especially alert to times of elevated risk, in particular the winter holiday season, and prepare an action plan of defense."

Among the findings:

* The most active day for threat-related traffic worldwide is Tuesday, with Monday a close second. This pattern holds true for the U.S., China, India, Mexico, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, and several European countries. View a snapshot of activity data by country for the week of November 14-20, 2010.

* The most active time for threat-related traffic in the United States is between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., Pacific Time.

* China and Taiwan top the list as the most heavily hit countries for worldwide threat-related traffic. Taiwan, New Zealand and South Africa are the countries most heavily hit with malware. The Netherlands, China and Taiwan lead the list for the most heavily hit countries with intrusion-related threats and multimedia threats. Click here for a snapshot by country for the week of November 14-20, 2010.

* Within the GRID, the most popular poisoned Google search terms during year 2010 were related to the Oscar� awards. Search terms included: "what time do the Oscars start," "Oscars 2010 tv schedule," "academy awards 2010 time," "Oscar ballot 2010 printable" and "Oscar winners 2010 list."

* Viruses continue to infect computers and networks worldwide. Top malware threats prevalent during 2010 were Conficker worm, Bredolab Trojans, Zeus Bots, SpyEye Bots, FakeAV Trojans, Oficla Trojans, as well as malwares and Web exploit kits such as Gumblar and Phoenix. For a list of important gateway anti-virus signatures that protected against these threats in 2010.

* Seasonal trends governed the occurrence of most computer exploits. Over the last three years, SonicWALL's signature hits indicating viruses, worms, Trojans and other forms of malware revealed these seasonal trends:

- Trojans peak in September and December, corresponding with the proliferation of back-to-school offers and holiday greeting cards

- Worms spike in December, correlating with the winter holidays

- Adware threats peak in September, October and December, correlating to more ads offered up from online advertisers trying to reach a more receptive online audience

"Malware activity in 2010 has already increased with the onset of the holiday season. This year alone, the amount of malware has tripled compared to year 2009. Overall, it is expected to become twice the levels seen for the same period over the previous two years."

Phishing fraud and website spoofing continue to be serious problems. As online transactions continue to grow, the number of emails soliciting people to go to bogus websites, too. Consumers entering personal data on falsified Web pages risk having their identity stolen, their finances hijacked or their computers downloading unwanted and malicious software. SonicWALL is continually adding new entries to its list of institutions likely to be targets of spoofing attacks intended to harvest usernames, passwords and other sensitive customer information. In November alone, SonicWALL added 10 new organizations including banks, payment processing companies and an Internet phone service provider.