Online security - how good is yours ?

[peterjhale]

This report suggest that most small businesses dont attend to online security - what do you think ?

Research suggests that most small businesses fail to take action against online security risks

The research carried out by the Institute of Directors, highlights unregulated download services and instant message application as major security risks

The IOD investigation into its members revealed that 66 per cent of small businesses are aware that their employees are violating security policy on download services and e-mial applications, yet 8 per cent still lack the most basic on-line protection.

The results also found that 50 per cent of small firms cite their staff as the highest security risk and yet lack the most basic anti-virus software.

Small businesses rely on e-mail as much as larger firms and the potential for a drop in production due to viruses and hacker attacks is ever increasing.

However, many experts believe the blame is targeted unfairly at the employee.

Jamie Cowper, senior technical consultant at Mirapoint, the security solutions provider, said, “Worms, viruses and spam are just a few of the threats SME’s must contend with.


“To a small business trying to survive and succeed on a tight budget, IT security can seem overwhelming and perhaps some SME’s are guilty of burying their heads in the sand.”

Cowper believes that even the simplest forms of on-line protection could save small businesses thousands,

“A mix of press and vendor hype has over complicated the issue of IT security and given the impression that effective prevention can only be guaranteed by spending large sums of cash and deploying a myriad of complex solutions.

“Cost effective, easy to manage protection against these threats is the name of the game and for this reason, an ‘appliance based’ approach to messaging and security, i.e. everything in the same box, is proving increasingly popular among companies of all sizes.”

[mbailey]

There's no excuse for not having a firewall and antivirus software in place these days, especially when you can get AVG Antivirus (ww.grisoft.com) and Sygate Personal Firewall (www.sygate.com) for free.

Note that these are free for personal use, and you may need to purchase a network version if you want to protect several PCs, but we are not talking £1,000's here.

I'd recommend looking at the latest Email software. Outlook 2003 seems to be pretty good at blocking spam, and also prevents images from downloading unless you've authorised the sender's email address to allow graphics to be displayed.

I'd also suggest speaking to your ISP - they may offer enhanced email accounts which, for a little more, have antivirus and antispam built in. Easyspace (www.easyspace.com) has this, as does Ultradesign (www.ultradesign.net) - I pay £300 for 20 email accounts, and had my spam/virus intake reduced from several hundred to just a couple. Their filters can be a little too aggressive sometimes, so you'll need to understand what is filtered. (For example, don't put !!!!! in a subject line, don't email file types that can contain viruses - zip them etc...)

Ask yourself this: If you came into work tomorrow and your PCs were not operational, what would you have to do to get them back up and running again? How long would it take and how much business would you lose because of it? Is there data that you do not have a backup of?

On another note...
I work from home and regularly back up to DVD-ROM, but it's not regularly enough for my liking, and is always a hassle to remember. So when I last upgraded my PC I stuck all of the old components in a case, added a wireless network card and stuck it in my loft. Every night at 2am it backs up my entire hard disc. That way, if a virus should get through or I have a hardware failure I can literally just bring the other PC down, decompress the backup file and start working with the latest data. (It also acts as a very good MP3 server as well ). Any old PC would do for this, as long as you have a nice big hard disc - these are very cheap these days.

[peterjhale]

Martin (hey - I remembered !)

That's good advice.

I also have an AOL/ McAfee personal firewall at home but I also run spy software search and destroy every few days - it's amazing what cr*p is sent to your computer without you knowing it

[mbailey]

Peter: I was going to start calling you Trigger. Then again, maybe you'd start calling me Dave...

[peterjhale]

yeh - I certainly felt like it !