Beat cyber attacks with prudent vigilance

Jonathan Bowers, October 6th 2008, 12:13PM

An article last week about Princeton University research into the sophistication of cyber attacks reminded me just how important it is for online businesses to take their security seriously.

The great strength of the internet is its accessibility but unfortunately the trade off is that this can also be its vulnerability. Providing access to legitimate Web surfers also means potentially providing access to those who would wish to do harm. So it is vitally important for any online business to ensure that they are doing all that they can to protect themselves and their customers from malicious cyber attack.

Most of you reading this blog will probably be thinking that you are totally covered, that you have the right level of protection in place. However, I’m sure that this was what global business giants ING Direct, New York Times and YouTube were thinking as well. According to the research from the Princeton group, all three were found to be vulnerable to attack because of weaknesses in their website coding or configuration.

A common theme to the problems the three websites experienced was data extraction. Cyber attackers were able to obtain important information of visitors to ING Direct, The New York Times and YouTube, which could be later used to obtain further crucial private information.

The realisation that such major organisations can become open to attack is very troubling but by taking the right precautions you can stay ahead of the online criminals.

The first piece of advice in such a situation is always - be proactive. Keep up to date with cyber attack trends and technological developments. Review your security software to ensure it is up-to-date and equipped to deal with new styles of online attack. Old security software is a waste of time.

Second, make sure that access to your website is properly monitored and protected. You obviously have to allow online traffic access through your server portals but procedures can be put in place to block tell-tail unscrupulous originators. Arm yourself with effective zero day protection systems.

Finally, talk to your hosting provider. All good hosting companies have comprehensive security procedures in place to ensure that their clients are fully protected. Make sure that your provider is delivering the protection you need, including appropriate security shields such as Cisco Guard.

It is a constant battle to defend your website from the attacks of online criminals but with proper attention and the right hosting support you can win the fight.

Tags: coding, consumer_confidence, cybercrime, internet, online fraud, phishing, security
# Comment (2 comments)

Things can only get better

Chris Norton, May 10th 2006, 9:45AM

Hello Earth! When people come to me seeking a deeper understanding of what a web developer does, I usually mumble something about back ends and databases and how it's much more interesting to do than talk about. Well today I feel like being more forthcoming, so here's a post about the joys of web dev.

Now (and forgive me for dipping into a bit of UKFast promotion here) I've been working on our new Client Area for a couple of weeks now, and it's struck me that the best bit of working on the web is the changeability of it all. Whilst there's always got to be a deadline, things are never set in stone. Nothing's ever perfect, but working in this fluid medium means that, if an improvement occurs to me, I can make it - now, or in the future.

Say you're a novelist, and you've just noticed you've used the word... I don't know... 'wow' far too many times, so many times that it looks ridiculous, hey, you used it five times on page 57 alone... well, you've just had that book published and now you look silly, you wow-obsessed fool. You can only beg the readers 'be kind to my mistakes'. If I on the other hand suddenly notice I've got far too many... I don't know... mysql_query commands going on in a script, hey, I used it five times on line 57 alone... well, I can fix it just like that - either now, or in the future when somebody goes 'Oi Chris, you mysql_query obsessed fool'.

Of course there are times when you could have done with some burning bridges, and you really really don't want to see X Y or Z script again. But on the whole, it's a satisfying plus-side to this beast we call development.

Tags: coding, development, websites, www
# Comment (0 comments)

Who cares what AJAX stands for?

Chris Norton, April 3rd 2006, 10:03AM

First, let me introduce myself. I'm Chris. I spend my days at UKFast weaving PHP pages from cold hard text, fiddling with brain-blendingly complex SQL queries and dancing the mystical dance of CSS.

When I'm not dealing with that triumvirate of three letter abbreviations (let's not get started on the acc vs abb stuff), I like to try and get my head round new web tech. Currently the biggest noise in development circles goes by the rather unwieldy name AJAX.

And it's actually the word AJAX, rather than the technology it describes, that I want to talk about. The technology - or rather technique - itself is handy, and as soon as I had the chance I stuck a bit of it on our Reseller Area site (first person to tell me where wins my undying admiration). Being able to interface with the server 'behind the user's back' feels tremendously freeing, and there's going to be a huge range of stunning sites using this very soon.

But that word, ugh. AJAX. It makes me think of a cleaning product. It'll make less geeky types than me think of a football team. It sounds like the name of a design-by-committee videogame character. It does not sound friendly, it does not sound user-centric and, in its unabbreviated form 'Asynchronous Javascript And XHTML', it even scares as big a nerd as me. AJAX as a term barely makes sense, and it's being blown up to the same giddy buzzword heights as Java was a decade or so ago.

The web, as something designed to be used, should always be led by the user. When projects with names like AJAXWrite come out, it seems to me that us web types are letting the technology take centre stage. I don't ever want to have to explain to a non-computing friend what this mystical, horrible word means - I felt silly enough explaining it to my colleague Chris, and he's the sort of chap who installs linux on his microwave for fun...

Let's keep web tech behind the scenes, people - before it just get silly.

Tags: ajax, ajaxwrite, coding
# Comment (2 comments)

Image size and uploading

Jonathan Bowers, March 27th 2006, 4:01PM

There's a running debate over in the creative office here today. The Research and Development team are questioning the Design team on the configuration of images for websites.

The question is: Should a designer spend time dividing the image into sections so that the webpage is loading up a number of separate files, giving the appearance of a faster page, or should the image remain one file?

The argument against division is that it is not actually faster, it just appears to be and on top of this, you have to write more code for each complete image, which may affect the speed.

I got out of the argument when it got down to "it depends how clean the code you are writing is."

I know plenty of businesses that do it one way and plenty that do it the other. So does it come down to personal preference, or is one way really better than the other?

Tags: coding, websites
# Comment (1 comments)