With the recent spate of Internet banking scams and phishing attacks on social networks, companies have an obligation to protect their staff and the company itself from being attacked through these channels. This is according to J2 Software managing director John Mc Loughlin.
South African banking customers were scammed out of R180 million in 2010 alone, compared to R40 million the previous year. Insiders are instrumental in the effective commission of these crimes; criminals are colluding with people who have expert knowledge to circumvent measures put in place by banks to safeguard their systems.
According to research by SA Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric), South Africa alternated between third and fourth place among countries with the highest incidents of phishing, a sophisticated crime in which criminals trick customers into disclosing confidential banking details before raiding their accounts, in the last three to four years.
Mc Loughlin says unprecedented levels of fraudulent e-mails are currently being circulated in an attempt to elicit private information from banking clients to gain access to their money.
“Our vision is to change the way companies address Internet security. As the malware landscape continues to evolve, there is one constant - reactive solutions that rely on identifying malware will only ever have limited effectiveness. Moreover, a network or computer can never be guaranteed to be free from threats - now or in the future. The key is to protect the data.”
He says by installing data protection software, one is deploying the most comprehensive, real-time data protection available for users of the Web. “Data protection software provides anti-phishing, it prevents identity and data theft by identifying whenever a user navigates to a scam phishing site.
“It prevents the site from loading, thus safeguarding you from entering confidential data into these Web pages. Your software is trained to recognise popular phishing targets. Whenever you attempt to navigate to a phishing page, you are warned through a message in your browser,” he explains.
The software protects the data that one enters online from being harvested by key-loggers. Key-loggers are forms of spyware or Trojans that monitor one's computer activities and covertly record the keystrokes entered by a user. Criminals use key loggers to steal people's identity, usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, banking details, SSN, etc.
“The anti-key-logging features of this software work on multiple levels of one's operating system and are far more powerful in terms of protecting data than those measures employed by conventional anti-virus solutions,” he adds.
Many key-logging Trojans also have a screen-capture facility enabling data to be stolen from online keypads, drop down menus, etc. The software prevents Trojans from stealing sensitive information by preventing them taking pictures of your screen. Once again, this feature ensures that users are far safer browsing the net than if they merely have conventional anti-virus software installed.
He says one of the main anti-key-logging measures of the software is that anything one enters into the Web fields in the browser is automatically scrambled; it is replaced with fake random characters. “This is what any key-logger in your computer would pick up - not your real key entries. When you see the scrambler working, you know your key entries are being protected.”
J2 Software is focused on information security and data-leak prevention, providing solutions that lower cost, complexity and management overhead. It provides an online technology platform, software as a service (SaaS), which radically improves the way companies manage their most important business communication and data.
“With solutions being delivered using cloud computing or software as a service models, clients can now gain immediate control over their e-mail management systems and their budgets. Their expense is purely the monthly per-seat fee with no need for additional spend on hardware, software or training,” he says.
“Our service provides a comprehensive solution for administering all aspects of e-discovery and e-mail archiving services, and it also provides e-mail anti-spam and e-mail filtering services, e-mail compliance solutions, and e-mail governance.”
Mc Loughlin says by connecting existing in-house e-mail servers, organisations can benefit from the carrier-grade infrastructure and services, including data-leak prevention solutions, e-mail archiving and e-mail continuity.
J2 Software focuses on neutralising the two greatest threats to Internet users - key-logging spyware and phishing attacks. These two attack methods are the cause of almost 95% of all data stolen from PC users.
“Our solutions solve the problem of identity theft and stops phishing. By protecting against key-logging and screen captures every time you enter data online, and by preventing phishing sites from loading in your browser, we can provide safe, secure browsing,” he concludes.
For more information, contact J2 Software on 0861 00 J TWO (5896) or e-mail john@jtwo.co.za.
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J2 Software
J2 Software is a leading South African information technology security company. While most organisations are now starting to realise the impact of data theft and abuse of IT resources by employees, J2 recognised the need to protect against this activity some time ago. J2 Software was born after the founders identified an opportunity in the information technology market in South Africa and the rest of Africa. They saw a growing need for information security solutions that were comprehensive, simple to deploy, easy to use and offered good value for money. After tireless searching and investigation, J2 Software was officially launched in 2006.
Shortly after inception, the customer list of J2 Software started to grow rapidly; and this continues to be the case to this day. J2 Software has provided services and solutions to numerous renowned, forward-thinking companies with sites running in South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
J2 Software provides solutions and services to various organisations that have a requirement to secure their sensitive information as well as implement, monitor and enforce internal security policies. In recent times, organisations are placing a far higher priority on the security, accountability and control of their most prized asset, their information.
Adding to this is the ever-growing pressure being placed on companies and their directors to maintain the security and control of the sensitive data of their clients, as well as the necessity to conform to various local and international compliance regulations.
With the continued rise of identity theft and confidential data leakage, the need for its product offering is not only an advantage, but also an absolute necessity.
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