Monday, 06 October 2008 05:12 pm

Protecting Your Business

With the increase in malicious emails infecting internet users worldwide, homeowners might soon find themselves having to build "virtual moats" around their properties and position electronic guards at various checkpoints to avoid being hacked.

Almost every day we hear of computer viruses that will cleverly attempt to masquerade themselves as something less sinister to try to outwit the less tech-savvy into lowering their often limited defences or beat those we already have in place so that they can worm their way through our networks causing havoc.

This state-of-the-art form of terrorism is smarter and potentially more damaging to humanity than the type which brandishes an AK47 or Kalashnikov.  The malicious perpetrators of these viruses stealthily float around cyberspace at the speed of light - and their evil is not hindered by race, creed, religion or colour.

The list of aliases that these brats dream up is limitless, with some labeling themselves as, for example, a software patch from Microsoft "that you must immediately install to prevent hacking".  In fact, that is exactly what they are attempting to achieve.

Most often when these damaging viruses get into our systems, they "harvest" email addresses from local files and spoof the "from address".  The aim is to lull us into a false sense of security when receiving emails from known senders.  Some may even attempt to download a "back door" from a remote website, allowing them to easily get back into your machine undetected at a later date.

Don't be so naive to believe that all attacks are external: disgruntled employees do exist, and they can all too easily infect your network with a virus.

It is not impossible for some unscrupulous individual to steal and sell your data to competitors or, worse, to abuse personal details of your guests.  Just imagine how valuable your guest history or business account information is to the open market - it needs to be protected, in the same way that you do with physical cash.

If you want to sleep soundly at night, then you have to realize that network security is just as important as the physical security of your building.  Start by conducting a thorough audit of your defences/system policies, (beware of spam-filtering software - see next article) and then consult with experts seeking their advice on such technologies as IDS (intrusion detection systems), IPS (intrusion prevention systems), firewalls and identity-management techniques.

Don't delay!

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