Your Internet Business Tool

Websense reported that in 2008 Most Popular Sites Were Hacked

High-profile media outlets were among those victimized, including CNET Networks, BusinessWeek.com, BillOreilly.com, and the New York Times…so how can you protect your online ‘shop’ if even the big ones are not able to do it?

First of all: never trust the users. It might sound harsh, but it’s all about the greater good for your internet appearance and in some extension even for the rest of your organization.

Just like a normal shop can be the main target for vandalism or accidents, so can your website.  The more visitors a web portal has and the more freedom the visitors enjoy, the higher the probability for damage to occur.

This has nothing to do with the modern buzzword “hacker” and how media blindly refers to this blunt faceless body that seemingly lives on the destruction of computerized equipment, although the expression has since long caught on, especially in movie theaters where the “hackers” are displayed as people with close to superpower control of electric devices.

In reality, ANYONE can easily access the broad knowledge base that is the Internet at any time and read up on a few tips and tricks on how to annoy web-administrators.  After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that politics, economic gain or even jealousy was behind the sabotage of assets belonging to an enterprise. And let us not forget all the acts that inadvertedly leads to damage, like breaking a plate in a shop. How do you protect yourself from hackers etc?

Amazon is providing good tutorial books about ‘How to protect from hackers’. For example:

Hacking Exposed Web Applications, 2nd Ed. (Hacking Exposed)

or you can download an interesting E-book like Hackers Nightmare. It gives answers to these questions:

• HOW TO keep your sensitive files away from prying eyes;
• HOW TO protect your PC from malicious attacks;
• HOW TO keep your online banking, shopping and e-mail safe.

Let us first identify the different levels of access that can be given to a user:

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There is a lot of free internet security software, so why pay? This question I cannot answer myself but I will invite the coming weeks speakers from our conference Internet Asia Summit & Awards 2009 in Kuala Lumpur, other experts in the field and I will introduce you to some new internet security software.

To start with an international survey: F-Secure’s Online Wellbeing survey showed that only 17% of respondents were absolutely sure that they had the latest patches and updates. 40% of respondents were less sure but agreed with the statement. Canadians were the most sure (22%) that their applications were patched, with Germans coming in second (21%).

The survey was carried out across 2019 Internet users aged 20-40 in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, UK, Italy, India and Hong Kong. There were approximately 200 persons surveyed per country. F-Secure asked respondents a series of basic online security questions and, using a Likert scale, asked them to rate the extent to which they were confident in the security of given online activities.

Do you want to check your internet security? Do the check at:

http://www.f-secure.com/en_EMEA/security/