Staying on guard against attacks
Do you remember Melissa? You should do: it was her 10th birthday recently. And sometimes she spells her name Malissa. Or 'Kwyjibo'. She's indiscreet, expensive, but oh so infectious.
It's more than 10 years since the Melissa virus opened eyes to the netherworld of attacks on computer systems through a malicious, self-regenerating software code. Melissa still holds first place in the dubious pantheon of the most costly computer viruses ever devised, a fact that can still make Fortune 500 CFO's wince. Viruses become worldwide celebrities. Their authors revel in anonymity. Melissa's maker, who really was named Smith, now works for the FBI.
We hear less about viruses today, but Harry Pun, north Asia client services manager for Symantec Hosted Services, is quick to remind that, 'they're still just as present, and in ever-increasing forms and variations. The impact of mobiles, netbooks, and the growing overlap between personal and professional use of computers has increased every company's vulnerability to viral attack exponentially'.
Symantec Hosted Services started more than 10 years ago as a company called MessageLabs in Britain. It was, like so many other new technology start-ups, a system integrator (SI) which used its IT expertise to make all the things inside, behind and connected to computers to communicate with each other and work.
Gradually, it realised that not only was the SI business too generic and, therefore, hugely competitive, there was a great need and potentially a far greater value in protecting those computer systems against all the security dangers to which those multiple, interconnected communications had left them vulnerable.
Today, Message Labs Symantec Hosted Services protects some 11 million end-users in more than 30,000 organisations worldwide against all manner of viral attack, and even guarantees 100 per cent protection against not only all known viruses, but all unknown ones too.
It can do this because its service is hosted externally from its clients' in-house systems. Every day, Symantec Hosted Services monitors six billion e-mails and one billion Web page visits before they reach their destination, using a heuristic solution aptly brand-named Skeptic to sift virtual wheat from cyberchaff. Instead of scanning for known viruses, it scans for myriad models and indicators which, when processed together, may lead to the conclusion that a given e-mail is likely to be infected.
Pun cites a recent attack as evidence of how successful his company's method is.
'Last month, a worm-type virus was launched against servers through a mass e-mail blast. Because our system is cloud-based, we were not only able to detect it and prevent it from reaching its targets, we did so with zero-time impact for our customers. At its height, we were blocking over 2,000 malicious e-mails per minute, and over 100,000 were blocked in total.'
The common sight of coffee shops full of besuited executives trying not to spill latte into their laptop, or tapping away at a smartphone screen while making a telephone call, is the most obvious outward sign of just how much we overlap today our personal and professional lives.
In a straw poll of Hong Kong users, Symantec Hosted Services found that more than 80 per cent used the same computer for professional and personal applications - in other words, anything they downloaded, opened or allowed to access their computer's operating system would also have access to their employer the minute they plugged back in to that network.
Most alarmingly, for such a computer-savvy population, one third of those questioned had no security or protective software installed against viral attacks.
As Pun points out: 'For the in-house IT department, the idea of an externally hosted security system must come as something of a relief, particularly the [small and medium-sized enterprises], who are unlikely to be able to afford the level of full-time manning required to deal with these issues.
'A hosted service keeps you up-to-date with no capital investment or addition to the head count.'
With companies such as Crown Worldwide, McDonald's, Caltex, The Peninsula, Langham and Mandarin Oriental hotels, and Cathay Pacific on their client roster, Symantec Hosted Services has good reason to feel confident about its prospects.
A new product offering endpoint protection - developed to address the problem of personal and professional overlap - appears well timed to shore up any potential breaches in their defences.
As long as viruses create personal, economic and corporate distress, there will be no shortage of wannabe mayhem-makers.
