"Internet Security:" An Oxymoron?

The Internet has often been described as the" information highway," the World Wide Web, and a place where businesses generate revenue. From an Information Security Officer's perspective, it is the worst neighborhood into which you could move! For the first time in history, someone living in Tokyo or South Africa can rob you or your business without setting foot on your property. These are a new breed of thieves, completely committed to stealing us blind while never setting foot on our property. No guns in your face in a dark alley, either. The stealthy information thieves don't want you to see or know them. Mail fraud has been around for a long time, but nowhere near the scale possible with the Internet, which spans the globe more quickly than we ever could have imagined just a decade ago. For example, a high-speed fraud occurred in 2001 after a US surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter plane. A number of banking web sites were seriously impacted by this event. How was it done? It only took a matter of minutes. The method used by those who quickly took advantage of this incident was a "vulnerability scan" that was rapidly conducted on specific web sites to see if a particular vulnerability existed. The web servers that were, in fact, vulnerable were then placed on a list that was used the following day to exploit this vulnerability and replace the banks’ web pages with one of their own. The actual “invasion” took less than 1 minute. It was accomplished via a computer program, as was the vulnerability scan. Very little human intervention was even needed. No enemy ever set foot on American soil; they didn’t have to. Internet information thieves have their eyes and ears everywhere; they take advantage of every opportunity to steal your confidentiality. When the opportunity does occur, they act quickly and decisively to achieve their objectives.