Cyber-crime is something that we are all aware of. While it may not have happened to us, we may have heard of someone that it has affected.

So what exactly is cyber-crime? Cyber-crime refers to a crime that involves a computer and a network. The computer and the network in most cases would be controlled by a third party to gain access to your data. In some cases that network may be used to direct further malware* to other networks. It is estimated that cyber-crime costs the Irish Economy 3% of turnover annually. This may be best illustrated with examples:

- Malicious hackers broke into several sections of BusinessWeek.com to redirect visitors to malware-hosting websites. Hundreds of pages were compromised with malicious JavaScript pointing to third-party servers.

- Popular social networking sites were hit by a worm using social engineering techniques to get users to install a piece of malware. The worm installs comments on the sites with links to a fake site. If users follow the link, they are told they need to update their Flash Player. The installer then installs malware rather than the Flash Player. The malware then downloads a rogue anti-spyware application, AntiSpy Spider.

- Websites worldwide were compromised with a malicious JavaScript. Initially a half million websites worldwide were infected with a Trojan horse variant which then downloaded additional Trojan’s onto users’ PCs. Then websites in China, Taiwan and Singapore were compromised followed shortly thereafter by humanitarian, government and news sites in the UK, Israel and Asia. In this attack the compromised websites led, through a variety of redirects, to the download of a Trojan.

So how does it happen? Well as illustrated above, it mostly happens though the use of unsecure internet access but not exclusively. Computers and networks can also become infected through email attachments and even unsecure Wi-Fi Hubs.

How do you protect your business? There is a large array of off-the-shelf software packages that offer a certain amount of protection. Software is never going to protect you 100%. You also need to ensure that you have adequate internal controls around anti-virus, computer updates and network reporting.

If you want to discuss any of the above or feel your business has weak internal controls around IT then you can contact me at william.hogan@quintas.ie or 021 4641400.

*malware is malicious software installed on the host computer under the guise of something else.