Twitter, the micro blogging platform, attracts a larger audience days after days. According to recent studies, lot of accounts stay un-updated for long periods of time.
On the other side, there are more and more huge communities of active users who tweet on specific topics: The IT security is represented by a lot of security professional already writing on Twitter!
For most users, Twitter primary usage stays notifying your “followers” that you’re blocked in traffic jams, you will be late to join your weekly meeting or your dog escaped last night (like all major social networking sites)! But Twitter can also be used to automatically spread useful information grabbed on the Internet like … security threat levels!
Some companies, active in IT security market, offer services of “security level” awareness based on an index like the well known DEFCON level used by the US Armed Forces. Indexes may vary depending on malicious activities detected by their honeypots network, on new viruses or malwares spreading in the wild.
It’s also possible to follow several threat levels on Twitter via the account “ThreatLevel“. Every time a security level is in- or decreased , a Tweet is generated (updated hourly).
The following threat levels are monitored (this can be an non-exhaustive list):
- Symantec ThreatCon
- McAfee Global Threat Condition
- Trend Micro Threat Level
- ISS AlertCon
- SANS ISC Internet Threat Level
- DHS National Threat Advisory
No need to visit several websites or follow RSS feeds, just follow @ThreatLevel.