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
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Email: Past it!

Chris Norton, April 21st 2006, 10:52AM

News reaches me (hot from today's Metro, courtesy of Mr Bowers) here at UKFast Blog Central that The Queen has received more than 20,000 birthday cards this year - and 17,000 emails. Looks like this new technology has finally filtered through to even the most established parts of The Establishment.

But of course, it's not new technology at all. Like a lot of the Internet (with the youthful WWW a notable exception), email's been around since the 60s. I think it's starting to show its age. Last night I was watching (I confess with some amusement) Rich trying to send a set of hefty images to a client - as often seems to be the case this was quite a painful, slow process. Have you ever had to receive a large file like that? Of course you have, we're all technical wizards here, right? You know what a pain it is - and it's no surprise given that this is a technology originally designed to send plain text messages between studious scientific types.

Nowadays email's mainstream enough to have been comprehensively hijacked by spammers. The big boys of the email world tell us it's alright, they'll make stronger filters, they'll add anti-phishing systems. Now I have to put up with Thunderbird telling me half my mail is a scam even when it comes direct from tech support (scandalous, those magic beans I'm getting from Paul are totally kosher). The truth is, we have all the resources we need to develop a new email system from scratch, but it's become so important and crucial to the way the world works that we're stuck building on top of an out-dated system.

I hope we can work it out, because I'm a little worried that half of the Queen's 17,000 mails were of the viagra-selling flavour - and that's no way to talk to royalty.

Tags: communication, email, internet, phishing
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How does your bank protect you?

Jonathan Bowers, April 18th 2006, 12:31PM

When you read statements like; "every day at least 400 credit card numbers are sold," it's easy to dismiss it off hand, that is until it happens. Then it feels like a real invasion of privacy, which of course, it is.

When looking for a new bank account or credit card provider, do you ask the provider what they are doing to counteract phishing and cyber crime? I'd imagine the majority of us don't - but soon it will be an obvious question.

But shouldn't it be the banks responsibility to inform us of how our information will be protected online?

There is an interesting post on Greg Hughes' blog about cyber crime targeting banks and what can be done about it. Greg builds anti-phishing software and is also a firm believer in prevention as protection and thinks the banks should communicate better.

I'd certainly prefer a better solution than banks issuing card numbers which are valid for single transactions only, which is actually one muted option.

The problem is that banks see a double edged sword. They refund stolen money but don't investigate, because the cost of investigation will often exceed the initial loss. They are also guarded about their security methods because they don't want to give anything away to the wrong people.

None of this however, builds the confidence of the spender who is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to finding the safest place for their money.

Tags: cybercrime, phishing
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