Protecting your Business while online
Some years back I remember chatting to an associate of mine in the United States on the telephone. It was about 2000. While he was talking to me he was trolling around the networks of some major South African companies. Durban he said was like a cake! So many businesses were accessible to him. Now he is a hacker and not a cracker! His intentions were to demonstrate then just how easy it was to breach security on computers connected to the ‘net. Its now 2006 and the situation has not changed much.
How does this affect me?
Well, when a cracker or someone like that accesses your machine he uses open ports on your machine which are simply put access lines into your machine or security flaws in the operating system. Say for example you have a webserver running which is connected to your network of office machines. The cracker access your website and exploits the security loopholes on the machine and is into your network. He scours your network until he gets the information he wants or trashes your machines. Remember the recent ABSA bank website debacle?
No-one is safe?
No-one is safe - that is for sure! Everyone is at risk if they go onto the internet. The Internet is like a giant public gathering ground. Everything that goes out onto the internet is accessible by anyone. So if for example you want to make sure that your email is secure you will have to encrypt it. The minute you click send and its sent the email travels across public networks accessible by all. It is not safe. In this way your computers are at risk too. I am astounded at just how lax the professionals in our country are. Top psychiatrists in Durban for example do not have any measures to secure their computers from outside access. Sure many are on slow dialup connections but they are still vulnerable! And the same goes for lawyers too! I wonder if these professionals are aware that anyone could troll their machines and steal confidential valuable information! Such as lawyers briefs or psychological reports! Just think of the recent scandal regarding certain governmental forces at what they were doing on the net!
How do I stop it?
It is imperative that you install and run a FIREWALL. Simply put a FIREWALL is your shield against crackers and unauthorised access into your systems. First it stops any open ports that you may have and then regulates traffic into and out of your machine - alerting you to any suspicious behaviour! We recommend that you purchase a firewall from a reputable company like Zone Alarms. Make sure that it runs with a good anti-spyware package and anti-virus package as security is linked to these facets of computing and crackers. Take a look at Simtel and browse the firewall sections.
