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ISSUE NO 64 DIGITAL TOOLBOX

RECENT RASH OF AFRICAN VIRUSES HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR SECURITY

The recent rash of viruses that seems to have affected a whole range of African mail-lists highlights the need to pay attention to security. Whether it’s viruses or hackers gaining entry to web sites or corporate networks, it’s time to assess whether you have adequate security in place. In order to do this you will need to spend money on building your defences.

So says Craig Levy, managing director of Ensquared, the IT consultancy company focusing on the ISP (Internet Service Provider) and networking markets. While America is tightening up, hackers are, however, having a field day in SA. "Because countries like America are tightening up security loopholes, SA is literally being used as a ‘penetration haven’ by hackers, many of whom have realised its just getting too hot in countries like the USA. So they target the weak points in other countries.

"They latch onto a file server here with a security hole and they hijack that file server and then send out hundreds of thousands of e-mail messages around the world over a day or two. It literally brings the server to its knees due to the sheer volume of e-mail - and the local company concerned takes the strain."

"Panic set in after bellwether companies like Microsoft got hacked. Corporate America suddenly realised how big the threat was and they started to throw big money at it. The only problem is that many SMME (small medium and micro enterprises) just don’t have the resources to take evasive action like the behemoths are. This is particularly true in Third World countries and emerging markets like South Africa. Here even our big corporates lack the money in comparison to corporates in the US. When it comes to the SMME market the situation is even more dire.

"In America they have the money to put in place costly firewalls and intrusion protection systems - here companies are battling just to fund the running and maintenance of their networks and e-business web-sites."

(source: http://www.ensquared.com )

OPEN STANDARDS FOR E-GOVERNMENT ARE VITAL

A recent symposium concluded "certain requirements of public administrations (independence, transparency, reliability) may best be met by applications based on open source. In public procurement for IT services, greater importance should be attached to the respect of open standards, and public administrations should be better informed about the availability of open source solutions."

The importance of open standards can’t be overstated—without them there would be no World Wide Web. In fact, the guy who invented the Web (Tim Berners-Lee) did so by writing three open standards—HTML, HTTP, and URL. For PDF on the topic (free chapter download), see:

http://www.duomopress.com/etaste-standards.pdf

And for more on open source, transparency, and free software (as the free software dude says," Think free speech, not free beer")see: http://www.duomopress.com/etaste-community.pdf

(source: Jeanne Follman: jeanne@duomopress )

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