Pro's and Con's of the Internet

There is no doubt that the Internet has been one of the biggest contributors to globalisation, it has enabled us to do business anywhere, anytime. It has ultimately enabled organisations to easily contact suppliers and customers around the world, 24 hours a day. However, the Internet has also brought about security threats to organisations. J2 Software managing director John Mc Loughlin looks at the impact of the Internet on organisations.

"The Internet has enabled staff to be more efficient, they can now easily send out quotations to customers, receive and process orders, easily generate and send out invoices; generate and send detailed confidential plans and/or designs; check stock; and collaborate with colleagues on tender submissions," he explains.

Mc Loughlin points to the security threats that the Internet has brought about. "Intellectual property and customer information, gained through many years of hard work and normally at a huge cost, can now easily be taken out of the organisation by means of email without anyone knowing that data theft has taken place."

He says the current business environment relies extensively on the storage and access of electronic information for efficiency and increased productivity. "The advantages are partially offset by the ease with which sensitive information that is stored electronically can easily be leaked and misused through either sale for profit or for competitive advantage. The advent of the Internet has made various technologies focus on the need to keep intruders out and to prevent access to sensitive information by outsiders."

Statistics show that 70 - 80 percent of theft relating to sensitive data and information originates from within organisations. Moreover, it also shows that 80 percent of all pornography and other inappropriate material is downloaded between office hours.

In order for an organisation to retain its competitive edge and restrict the leakage of sensitive data and information, organizations need to consider implementing a state-of-the-art Information Leakage Detection & Prevention solution like SystemSkan. Information Leakage Detection & Prevention is an umbrella term coined by IDC to encompass emerging solutions for mitigating the risks of unauthorised delivery of sensitive information.

SystemSkan has been developed to protect enterprises from "the enemy within", by allowing organisations to monitor, restrict and control the activities of individuals or groups of users, thereby enforcing company security policies across the enterprise.

SystemSkan provides the ability to view; record and restrict activities, including Internet, email, instant messaging and application-specific activities. Further developments underway include the management of "cut-and-paste" activity and the printing of sensitive documents. Unlike basic monitoring products that only provide a report reactively once a security breach has occurred, SystemSkan also provides proactive security features.

"This proactive functionality prevents policy breaches before they occur by continually and automatically screening all user activity, and it can be configured to prevent inappropriate activities or lock users' PC's when the company's policy has been broken," he adds.

In today's Information Age, most sensitive data and information is stored electronically thereby making it relatively easier to access. Often access to such sensitive data is required to be provided to a group of internal staff for the sake of ongoing business operations. However, in today's competitive world no staff member is really permanent. It is not often guaranteed that all personnel are loyal and content and would not seek other forms of profit. Due to this, there exists a ready market for the purchase of sensitive information, especially relating to an organisations' customer data, product strategies, channel information and various other data that competitors or others would be more than ready to buy for a price.

Until recently the primary focus has been on inbound threats where all effort has been spent on the need to keep the information technology environment secure from external threats. Towards this end major technology solutions have emerged that focus on preventing intruders and hackers from accessing an organisation's IT network and resources.

With the advent of mobile technologies and removable devices it has become extremely easy for the outbound movement of data from within the previously assumed secure confines of an organisation. Mobile phones, USB thumb drives, DVD/CD drives, Disk on Key (DOK) devices are freely available at affordable prices that make it easy for individuals to copy, store and remove sensitive information without arousing suspicion of theft.

The emergence of the Internet as a powerful medium for communication has given rise to numerous web-based email services such as gmail, yahoo and hotmail to name a few. Almost all of these services provide huge mailbox storage capabilities thereby allowing individuals to email out large extracts of sensitive data bypassing the organisation's secure email systems.

"Almost everybody you ask will tell you that their company has an internal IT Policy which is meant to govern the use of the company's IT Infrastructure. Some of them will tell you exactly where it is stored others will tell you that they remember seeing it many months ago. Those very same people will more than likely also tell you that they have not seen any physical, measurable enforcement of this policy," he explains.

"So how is your policy enforced? Is it with a nice laminated copy of the policy stuck up on walls around the office building, or perhaps regular e-mail warnings sent from top management stating that if any inappropriate information or material is found on the machines it can lead to further disciplinary action."

He says the average staff member is going to do as much as they can possibly do without getting caught. "Many will decide to quickly surf the web to find the latest and greatest MP3's for their personal player before they get to the business task at hand, then once found they will download them on the company. Now because the bandwidth is being used up and it is too slow to send out e-mail correspondence; as they wait for the download to complete they have no option but to play a few card games on their company computers. After all, there are nine hours in a day, we can wait a while before we finish off that assigned task."

SystemSkan provides a new and practical approach to solving this business dilemma, one which minimises the effort involved in securing and monitoring the access, usage and activity concerning the information on the network. The easily configurable and silent solution provides the organisation the ability to not only effectively enforce its security policies, but also use the logs and data collected by SystemSkan to periodically update the Security Policy to cater to the advances in technology.

"The SystemSkan solution also sets itself apart by offering a really simple-to-use reporting tool. This reporting tool can be used by everybody that has the rights to access it; not only the very technical IT staff at the organization. Finally, the SystemSkan solution is primarily focused on enhanced productivity, loss containment, revenue enhancements and operational efficiencies that are in line with the objectives of all modern organisations. The solution provides many obvious benefits with easy to realise returns," he concludes.