As explored earlier within the chapter, e-mail is an especially valuable tool that has found a secure place in today’s business environment, but it should even be noted that e-mail does have significant limitations with relation to privacy, piracy, and filtering. Not only is there a risk to your company through email correspondence, but computer crime, cyberterrorism, and viruses all pose a threat to your business operating systems.
Intellectual property is that the most respected a part of any business and as an assets it’s also extremely difficult to guard. Just as computers and software programs offer efficient ways of communicating, they also provide gateways to unintended/illegal information sharing that is difficult to watch.
The Computer Security Institute conducted a survey in 2003 that had disturbing results. The survey showed that 15 percent of companies didn’t know whether their systems were attacked the previous year. And of these who reported that that they had had attacks on their systems, more than half them never reported it to anyone. even as crime on the road has enforcement officers monitoring and trying to control it, so does computer crime.
Although the information could seem hard to believe, consider that employees or outsiders can change or invent data in computing programs to produce inaccurate or misleading information or illegal transactions or can insert and spread viruses. There also are people who access computer systems for his or her own illicit benefit or knowledge or just to work out if they will get in, which is observed as hacking.
Almost as if it were a awfully challenging game, computer hacking has been responsible over the past several years for a few of the foremost serious crimes in business. One hacking technique noted because the Trojan horse allows hackers to require over a computer without the user knowing and capture the password of an investor’s online account, for example. These are the safety issues that clients and corporations have to face as online investing, banking, and account management become more the norm.
Identity theft, international hiding, theft of business trade secrets, auction fraud, internet site spoofing, and cyber-extortion are all schemes that were meted out in 2002 and involved a minimum of 125,000 victims and quite $100 million. And these crimes didn’t make the pc Security Institute’s Computer Crime and Security Survey.
Computer viruses are programs that secretly attach themselves to other computer programs or files and alter, export, or destroy data.
Because viruses are frequently spread through e-mail, it’s important to know who the sender is before opening the message or an attachment.
It is best to use antivirus software to work out if the document incorporates a virus or whether the message should simply be deleted.
Not only is that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) concerned about viruses, but Microsoft, along with the FBI, United States Secret Service, and Interpol, announced the introduction of an antivirus reward program in November 2003. Microsoft is involved funding the program to help enforcement agencies identify and convey to justice people who illegally release damaging worms, viruses, and other sorts of malicious code on the web.
Other computer crimes contains actual theft of computing equipment (laptops and PDAs are particularly vulnerable thanks to their small size), using engineering to counterfeit currency or other official documents (passports, visas, ID cards, etc.), and using computer technology to illegally download or “pirate” music and movies that are copyrighted. With most potential for computer crime, what can small business owners do to guard themselves?
The U.S. Department of independent agency suggests taking the following steps if you’re worried that your systems are attacked:
✔ Respond quickly.
✔ Don’t stop system processes or tamper with files if you’re unsure of what actions to require.
✔ Follow organizational policies/procedures.
✔ Use the phonephone to speak.
✔ Contact the incident response team of your bank.
✔ Consider activating caller identification on all incoming lines.
✔ Establish contact points with general counsel, emergency response staff, and enforcement.
✔ Make copies of files intruders may have copied or left.
✔ Identify a primary point of contact to handle potential evidence.
✔ Don’t contact the suspected perpetrator.
In addition, it’s important to stop access to your system and viewing of your data by unauthorized users. Passwords, firewalls, and encryption software are useful during this regard.
Finally, it critical to make a copy your data and computing systems just in case your system is attacked and you wish to retrieve data that has been altered or destroyed within the process. There are many systems and ways for backing up data and it doesn’t matter which you select, but rather that you simply consistently and accurately copy your data for your records.
