State of the web security research report.

Zscaler ThreatLabZ, the research arm of Zscaler, the cloud security company, has just released its Q1 2012 State of the Web security research report. Based on web traffic traversing the Zscaler cloud--which amounts to two hundred billion transactions from millions of business users across the globe, key report findings include the following:

* Nearly 10% of websites may be malicious--9% of 27,000 sites tested by Zulu (http://zulu.zscaler.com/)--a free service that gives you real-time website security information--were ranked as suspicious, and another 9% as malicious.

* Mobile device leadership shifts--Apple device usage in the enterprise surged (on average), to 48% of traffic, while Android declined to 37%. This after iOS usage in Q4' 11 averaged 40% of mobile traffic, and Android 42%.

* Facebook use on the decline--Facebook accounted for 41% of Web 2.0 traffic, down from 43% in Q4'11 and 52% same time last year. Taken on average, this means a 2.8% drop in Facebook use per quarter.

* Twitter gains steam Twitter use is on a slow and steady rise, up from 5% in Q1'11 to 7% this quarter.

* Policies blocking social networks become more prominent--Social networking sites accounted for 4% of policy blocks in the enterprise by the end of Q1, whereas at the beginning of the quarter it accounted for only 2.5%.

* Outdated plug-ins continue to be a ripe attack vector - Users are slow to update browser plug-ins and attackers know it, as witnessed by the Flashback Trojan, which infected over 650,000 Macs leveraging a Java vulnerability. However, the situation is improving ... this quarter, 35% of installed Adobe Shockwave plug-ins were outdated, down from 52% in Q4'11. Over 60% of Adobe Acrobat plug-ins were outdated, and Java was the fourth most outdated plug-in at 5%.

* Huge gaming spike--Sports and gambling site traffic spiked, as expected, at the start of March Madness, but this time to the tune of 74%.

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