Action plan outline for businesses who suspect an online attack

The world now encourages an environment where computer crime is over-whelmed with opportunities. Martin Baldock argues that companies should be aware of how to defend themselves and produce a series of practical steps in preparation for a cyber attack.

Businesses cannot only suffer damage to their reputation if their computers are compromised, but there are issues of data protection, industrial espionage, malicious damage or embezzlement. Yet most leave their security policy limited to a free anti-virus application.

There has always been something unnerving about discovering that someone has trespassed on your property but such 'invasions' are no longer restricted to land and homes, they now extend to our laptops, desk computers and even mobile IT devices.

It's easy to assume that invasion of a PC either directly by an online hacker or by a malicious software tool only ever happens to someone else, and is the result of someone visiting 'dodgy' websites. Increasingly this is not the case.

Young people are highly IT literate. It is commonplace now for pre-teen children to use computer networks at school, for homework timetables to be loaded onto mobile phones and for work to be submitted via email. Criminal organisations have become aware of what computers can do and what information they can store and have been encouraged to turn to 'cybercrime' as a softer option than more traditional forms of wrongdoing.

The use of easily available hacking tools and the wide growth of covert intrusion groups have made life easier for cyber criminals, encouraging attacks on weak organisations.

Computer crime has its own attraction

Remote access for unauthorised activity to another computer system has several attractions such as:

• there is no need to be local to the PC or network, anonymity is far easier to achieve and allows anyone to hide their identity while committing crimes

• email spoofing, creating fake profiles and committing computer-user identity theft are common occurrences; there is very little to stop it and this makes investigation difficult

• with cyber crime, there is no collateral or forensic evidence, such as eye witnesses, fingerprints, or DNA, making these crimes much harder to prosecute. Often they rely solely on expert opinion from a computer forensic examiner.

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