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By Bill Hely
"How Safe is Your Success"
is a series of eight articles. Each article addresses a different aspect
of a universal problem which is of particular importance to those who do
business on-line. Most Internet users are at least aware there are dangers
"out there", but few appreciate the real extent of those dangers, the possible
(even likely) consequences, or the best, most practical and least expensive
means of countering them. This series is intended to at least provide some
useful awareness of the situation.
Part 1 - Introduction
We all appreciate that the perception
of "success" in business is a matter of degree. Success to one person may
be earning enough to pay the household bills on time, have three weeks
holiday a year and a new car every three. Another may settle for nothing
less than being able to fly first-class to their own overseas holiday home
and lease a new luxury sports coupe every 12 months.
If you operate any sort of
a business, online or off, your degree of success may range from mild to
outrageous. On the other hand, if you are not having any success at all,
you probably have other things on your mind than securing something that
you don't yet have. It's not that this series doesn't apply to the yet-to-be
successful it certainly should but they probably will not allot it
a very high priority.
So in essence I am aiming
this series of articles more at those who are successful, or who are at
least well on the road to success, if only because they have the most to
lose. But smart beginners will do themselves a great service by riding
along also.
Success in business rarely
comes overnight. While it is the uncommon exception to that rule that gets
the publicity, success is much more often the result of steady progress
towards a goal. That's making a complex effort sound simple, but however
easy or difficult your progress, the fact that you are progressing is pleasant
to contemplate.
Now, what I want to do is
disrupt your pleasant reverie.
I want to shatter your calm,
give you something to panic about and get you thinking about a lot of bad
stuff. And I want to do that not because I am a nasty little man, but because
I want to help you.
A lot of bad stuff has happened
to a lot of successful people online and, with every day that passes, the
odds increase that similar bad stuff will happen to you. The result could
be as destructive as having every shred of your success wrenched from your
grasp in the space of moments. Many thousands of businesses, big and small,
have gone to the wall because they didn't adequately prepare for the bad
stuff I am going to tell you about.
But first I guess I need
to give you a reason to read and believe.
Maybe you recognize my name
from various online discussion forums, or maybe you jumped ahead and looked
at the attribution at the bottom of this article either way you may think
you know that my speciality is computer and Internet security. Note that
I said "think you know", because that's only partly right. Some of my associates
describe me as a "technical writer", but that's not quite right either.
My interest is in presenting relatively technical topics in a non-technical
manner that can be easily understood by non-technical people, so I guess
"non-technical writer" would be more accurate. I particularly don't like
the terms "technical writer" or "security specialist" because they tend
to frighten off the very people I strive to help.
Computer and Internet security
are very wide-ranging and complex topics so much so that even experienced
experts specialize in just a subset of the whole. This may be part of the
reason that a perception has developed among the general online populace
that anything related to "computer security" is too difficult to be tackled
by anyone other than an expert.
So consider the enigma we
are presented with if that's all true.
On the one hand, you'd have
to be bereft of all five senses and living on Mars not to know there is
a sub-culture of Internet denizens who get their jollies by interfering
with, stealing from and generally harming other people. We all know this.
Logically we must then understand that if we connect to the Internet, we
become potential victims of these cyber-grubs. But, on the other hand,
we just know that we are powerless to do anything about it because it's
"all too hard".
The big corporates are OK
they can afford to hire those experts and specialists I just spoke of.
But what about the non-IT-expert, the average computer user and/or small
business operator what do they do for protection?
Well, I am going to let you
in on a little secret. A secret that, if you take it seriously, just may
save your business in the not too distant future.
A lot of what you have been
led to believe is complete garbage.
Many experts treat average
PC users as if they are imbeciles; many others know better but they want
you to think you are an imbecile anyway. It's in their vested interests
to have you thinking like that. As long as you "know" that security is
just "too hard" there'll be an inflated demand for their services.
Don't get me wrong. There
are some security issues that really are very complex and well beyond the
ken of mere mortals. Such situations do demand the services of highly skilled
specialists. Even basic security relating to mid- to big-business networks
requires extensive technical knowledge.
But as a small business operator,
there is an awful lot you can do to safeguard against ever getting into
a compromised situation, and to safeguard the privacy and integrity of
your data.
That is, to safeguard the
success you have already attained as well as that still to come.
In Part 2 well look at one
of the biggest weaknesses in your Internet interactions the web browser.
And no, it's not going to be a knock-Internet-Explorer-fest. Throughout
this series we are going to stick to practicalities and realities.
In the meantime I'd like
to leave you with some homework. Here's a link to a detailed article I
wrote concerning some urban myths about browsers:
http://hackersnightmare.com/FreeContent/Browser_Wars.pdf
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Bill Hely is a technologist,
consultant and author living in Brisbane, Australia. For most of the last
two decades his professional focus has been on advising and supporting
small business operators in Information Technology and Office Productivity
issues and rescuing them when they didn't heed his advice the first time
around. He is the author of several books on technology for the business
operator, including the Bible of Internet and computer security "The
Hacker's Nightmare". For more information on this must-read tutorial
and reference visit: http://HackersNightmare.com |
