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Protection from Spies,Hackers
Corporate spying is not new technology.It is a old hat,practiced astutely by all those who are ambitious,cut throat and go getting entrepreneurs.But today with internet and domination of the industrial scene with new technology industries,your competitor releases a cutting edge solution which you were preparing to launch in 6 months before you do.You wonder how and spend sleepless nights to regain your initiative.
Most valuable information today in any enterprise is contained in electronic form and since these computers are networked online or otherwise through wires, system administrators play a key role in defending an enterprise against espionage activities.Hence security strategies are to be planned,modified to minimize the risk as you have both Internal and External threats.
A network in a company is quite vulnerable to Insider espionage as survey has found that three fourth of insiders have unauthorized access to system area which needs protection.Insider threat could be by BRIBERY,SOCIAL ENGINEERING,GROUP COLLUSION.
Bribery:: Employees may be directly approached by outsiders, offering cash to provide proprietary and confidential data.
Social Engineering:: Network administrators and IT personnel could be manipulated to divulge information on logon and other authentication data to gain entry into sensitive area.
Group Collusion:: Several employees could share collective knowledge to gain access.
The major threat from outside could come in various forms depending on online user activity like Usenet participation.Passwords can be cracked using BO2K, SATAN and similar PW cracking programs.Protection against this menace could be done by using 10/12 alphanumeric characters in the password and changing them frequently and increasing the encryption level 128/256/512 bits.The brute programs then has to spend days to uncover one password.
E-Mail and internet traffic shall be monitored using programs like 'littlebrother' to prevent transaction of sensitive data.
Comprehensive antivirus solutions to scan and catch Trojan horses,e-mail attachments,port calls shall be implemented rigorously.Intrusion detection software called "Firewalls" as they protect a computer or a network of computers with a wall around all ports of entry, by allowing entry only to authorized programs.Thorough alerts,logging,tracing,threatening the intruder with criminal action,sealing of all ports,prevention of port scanning,worstcase shutting down and isolating the network/computer are all done very effectively by these Firewall programs or hardware firewalls.
All said and done ,effective steps always depend upon the user.Any careless ooverriding can result in complete wastage of efforts.So the Human factor,honesty,loyalty and sincerity along with all steps mentioned above shall minimize ifnot eliminate potential breaches.
If you are interested to install a personal Firewall,click "PCWEEK" link,choose "firewall" and download and install any one of the following.
And then there was the Time Warner broadband debacle, when the company eavesdropped on Southwestern Bell's customer representatives by paying its own employees to order and then cancel broadband service from the company.
Most of the time, corporate spying is cloaked in euphemisms. Your average corporate conglomerate may have a million-dollar budget for secret information gathering, but as the authors of "Spooked" tell us, "internal competitive intelligence departments [are] hidden from public and shareholder scrutiny, many with seemingly innocuous titles -- External Development, Market Research, and Strategic Marketing."
"Spooked" authors Penenberg, who made his name reporting on the world of hackers for Forbes, and Barry, himself a corporate spy, promise an inside look at this corporate underworld. Unfortunately, what's actually going on there isn't nearly as fascinating as the word "spying" might suggest.
"Competitive intelligence" is a growing industry, and its corporate spies are in high demand. The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (basically, corporate spy central) has 7,000 members, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that $25 billion in shareholder money is lost every year in intellectual property theft. In the information age, intellectual property is money -- so is it any wonder that greedy multinationals are trying to get the dirt on what their competitors are up to?
For most of these companies, the target is data: business plans, patents, pricing lists and product details -- all readily available to the seasoned sleuth. "Spooked" describes a recent crop of former CIA agents who are now moving into corporate America to set up intelligence-gathering divisions. They're equipped with a new generation of high-tech spy tools like the answering machine pick, which steals messages off a target's machine; Raytheon's Silent Runner, which can access your enemy's e-mail; or the GPS digital tracking systems, which will track your target's location (for a mere $5,995.95).
But despite the CIA operatives and their nifty gadgets, corporate spy departments rely mainly on good old-fashioned, though stealthy, research. A Motorola spook spying on Toshiba (with which the company is considering a partnership) simply makes a lot of phone calls to analysts and suppliers who have worked with the company. The sneakiest thing he does is hire a foreign contact to have a friendly dinner with Toshiba executives and then report back on the conversation.
A corporate spy for PictureTel spied on its biggest competitor, Polycom, by going to a trade show with a fake name tag, striking up conversations with Polycom booth attendants and eavesdropping on conversations in trade-show cafeterias and airports. And then there are the "librarians," who basically do the same job as an analyst or journalist -- lots of Web research, telephone calls and reading -- but with the goal of feeding information back to executives.
