DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY’S SECURITY
IT security problems are becoming more and more complicated – how to respond to the challenge? Whether to apply IT protection proactively – with layers, so that every layer will raise the security level? What kind of challenges will bring mobility, new terminal devices and the increasing use of email services through mobile phones?
Viruses and spam are a drastically increasing international problem. The costs caused by them are counted in billions of euros. Spam handling causes direct expenses. Companies whose employees use their effective working time for problem solving every month for several hours are paying for this. Expenses arising from viruses are harder to foretell; in worst cases they result in years of additional work.
In Finland a worm has closed down the offices of Sampo and Nordea Banks; in the USA the targets were automatic cash dispensers. Worms have also stopped trains in the USA and Australia, as well as causing the cancellation of flights all around the world. In Sweden a virus hit hospitals; in Taiwan postal offices. The slammer worm virus managed to get through to an atomic power plant in Ohio, USA.
The border between spam and viruses is blurring. Spam messages are also containing more and more viruses. The latest threat is “ phishing” meaning criminal search for information like passwords etc. Those messages look like junk mail but their contents invite the receiver to go to a certain web site and to download a spy application, for example. Phishing frauds are getting better and it is the fastest growing field in www crimes. Samples of various spam messages »
Continuous process
IT security and its maintenance is a continuous
process. The first viruses arrived by the eighties, and hacking began to
increase from the mid-nineties. At these times the authors of viruses and
the hackers used to be separate groups. At the end of the nineties, when
email traffic became common, the email worms arrived. Email is in fact the
most common way to spread viruses.The virus creators and crackers started to collaborate in the first half of 2000. This resulted in various super- and combined viruses. The newest products are malwares, intrusion applications, and spywares, which operate, amongst other things, as information cracker tools. The time window for virus protection applications has diminished during the last few years. The amount of unknown viruses is continuously increasing. They are blocked with various systems based on heuristics. Investment required by information security companies has increased during this time and this growth is expected to continue. Companies either concentrate on security themselves or outsource it to specialists.
Outsourcing brings remarkable cost savings and at the same time the company is able to allocate more time to its own line of activities. The outsourcing of IT security has during the last few years risen to the top of the most outsourced services. Previously, companies took care of it themselves, but due to the fast development of malware, more and more companies are now outsourcing their IT security maintenance to specialised service providers.
Is
Outsourcing the answer?
Growth in outsourcing is furthered by
companies wanting to save costs and concentrate on their main line of
activity. According to research company IDC, companies are outsourcing
their information security issues because the field has become more
complicated. Companies have to deal with security issues in the jungle of
new operating systems, new viruses, remote connections, several offices,
firewalls and information security politics. Portable laptops and new
intelligent phones on the market are creating new challenges to IT
security. D-Fence’s centralised, preventive virus protection solution is a
rational way to efficiently protect different terminal devices operating
in changing environments.An even greater threat than viruses is the increasing amount of spam. According to research company Gartner, on average half of the emails which arrive in company inboxes are junk mail. Also, our surveillance statistics confirm this. Current spam amounts are already exceeding 90 percent of all traffic.
IT security and its maintenance has been demanding more and more attention and additional investments. The easiest way to control this circle is to outsource these matters to a specialist service provider. The information security of tomorrow is created today. This is where outsourcing is the strongest and most cost efective option.