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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Lies, damn lies and statistics

Jonathan Bowers, September 15th 2008, 5:42PM

Statistical surveys are interesting not just for the results they show but also for why they show those results. It is often said that stats can be made to support just about any contention depending on the timing, question wording, sample group etc. And I certainly give a lot of credence to such a view.

The UK Government holds to the laughable position of trying to convince us that a crime survey of a cross section of society is a more accurate reflection of crime in the UK than official police figures. No doubt this is because the perceptions of most of those surveyed are favourable to Brown and co. Then there is the SNP holding off on a vote for Scottish independence because they know that right now they would lose. For them timing is everything.

So why am I on about surveys? Well this week a survey from security firm Finjan http://www.safedns.co.uk/news/businesses-now-most-worried-by-cybercrime.html states that online businesses are now more worried about cybercrime leading to data loss than downtime. Don’t get me wrong, cybercrime is a very important issue that we at UKFast take extremely seriously. We use state-of-the-art security and firewall applications to ensure that our clients are totally protected. However, I am surprised that cybercrime would concern online businesses more than downtime.

The potential threat of downtime is at least as serious as cyber attack if online businesses use cheap and unreliable hosting. And downtime can be just as devastating to an internet business as a serious cyber attack. An online business needs to have a reliable online presence. If potential customers cannot access a website they can, and will, go to a rival at the click of their mouse. Then, once they have sampled the online services of the rival, they may never come back.

So we have considered the results, what about why the reasons for them. Firstly, businesses are rightly very concerned about cybercrime and data loss and so many would vote for it as the major concern at any time. However, other crucial factors probably included the spate of recent high profile news stories about UK Government data losses and the fact that the company carrying out the research is an online security specialist.

Online businesses should be serious about protection against cybercrime but they also should be serious about ensuring that downtime doesn’t happen. A dedicated server hosting solution will massively reduce the threat of either problem. For even greater reassurance, a total managed solution offers expert support and monitoring 24/7.

Tags: cybercrime, e-commerce, internet, security, websites
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We send less spam but get just as much

Jonathan Bowers, April 17th 2007, 9:55AM

It's obviously good news that the UK has fallen out of the 'dirty dozen' spam sending nations in a new report by Sophos but the main reason we have fallen out of the list seems to be because other nations are now sending more, rather than the fact that we are sending less.

The new report which compares Q1 2007 to the same time last year also notes that Europe has now overtaken Asia as the largest spamming continent. Increases across many parts of mainland Europe have been compounded by a huge surge in spam from Poland which has almost doubled in a single year.

India is one of the nations responsible for knocking the UK out of the top 12, as is Taiwan but the biggest newcomer to the Spamming 'dirty dozen' is Italy accounting for 5 per cent of the world's spam.

One last interesting factor is that China, while still in second place has reduced its spam percentile from 21.9 per cent to 7.5 per cent in a single year. In comparison, the US has only managed to reduce its contribution by 3.3 per cent.

Tags: security, spam
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Where is Internet Safety Week?

Jonathan Bowers, March 27th 2007, 2:11PM

Yesterday, the BBC along with getsafeonline.org published the results of a survey about Internet safety. There are some interesting, yet not all that surprising percentages in the stats.

The biggest eye opener is that less than half of us actually realise that the responsibility for protecting our personal data starts with us as users. One in six thought the responsibility should lie with the banks instead.

It's also interesting that five percent of people had experienced online fraud and also had their bag, wallet or mobile phone stolen, showing that online fraud is not always originated from information gathered online.

The survey is supposed to begin an Internet Safety Week, however, apart from two articles on the BBC website, there doesn't appear to be anything else online that actually delivers this agenda. It's a shame because if the survey shows anything, it's that the general public need encouragements to learn more about how to be safe online.

Tags: security
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Mobile defences

Jonathan Bowers, March 1st 2007, 10:10AM

If you are using mobile Internet devices, do you have secure network access and a company usage procedure? This may sound like overkill but mobile malware is a growing threat. According to Sophos' Security Threat Report 2007, sixty four percent of companies have admitted they do not have any protection in place on their mobile smartphones and PDAs, yet 81 percent are concerned about the possibility of mobile intrusion.

So whose responsibility is it to secure your mobile devices? John Pescatore of Gartner, a company that offers technology-related insight to its clients, believes the responsibility ultimately lies with the mobile carriers. I decided to call some of the UK’s major players to see what security provisions they had for mobile Internet.

Orange informs me that there is nothing on its mobile network that will protect my phone from malware. However, to soften this blow, the rep opined that 98 percent of all mobile viruses are caused by Bluetooth and as Orange’s Smartphones don’t use this it isn’t a problem. He suggested that I speak to phone manufacturers rather than networks if I wanted to look into it further.

Pescatore also says that in the first instance we need to make sure users are well educated about the threats and this view is echoed by T-Mobile. The contact here said he would send me some information about their mobile security policies but instead forwarded me three links to websites that informed me how to be vigilant whilst using mobile Internet devices. Valuable information but not quite what I was after.

Shane Coursen, senior technology consultant at Kaspersky Lab also believes we should be more proactive as users and download both firewall technology and anti-virus software to our mobile phones. But should manufacturers be doing this for us?

Carphone Warehouse informed me that none of the Internet enabled phones it sells have any protection as standard – further more, none of the manufacturers plan to add such a facility. It did however say that Smartphones will support downloaded software if I can find any that is suitable.

So right now, at the advent of the mobile Internet we cannot rely on either our mobile network or our phone manufacturer for the security support we need. We must look for downloadable packages and encourage safe usage policies. My research leads me to encourage you to take your mobile security as seriously as for your PCs and Laptops. Once prices come down and technology improves we could all find ourselves with another device to defend from cyber crime.

Tags: mobile_internet, security
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