Enterprise Security: For your eyes only

The Slammer: Malicious code has emerged as the single-largest factor behind security breaches. According to the CSI/FBI Survey 2002, more than 94% of large corporations worldwide have had sizeable downtime and financial losses due to malicious code attacks. As per the recent CII-PricewaterhouseCoopers Survey, 75% of Indian corporates have had serious incidences of malicious code attacks "forcing them to shut down external connections to the Net, resulting in large losses due to downtime and lost business opportunities". The recent SQLSlammer attack is a case in point. Electronic Scavenging: Next to security breaches caused by malicious code, the second major cause of a security breach–often used for corporate espionage– is ‘electronic scavenging’.

Electronic scavenging involves rummaging through disposed magnetic media for retrieving sensitive data that is left behind on it. Results from an MIT study, which is being published in the January/February 2003 issue of IEEE Security and Privacy, suggests that the secondary market is awash with confidential information. Scavenging through the data retrieved from 158 used and formatted disk drives, the students at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science found more than 5,000 credit card numbers, detailed personal, and corporate financial records, numerous medical records, gigabytes of personal email, and pornography. The intention here is not to scare you. How-ever, if you are one of those who consider data a critical corporate asset, and essential to business continuity, read on...

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