Internet

Confronted with information management challenges, organisations often operate on a reactive basis, developing ad hoc solutions to specific problems as they arise. Because of this, many document management programmes are rife with duplicated procedures, non-standard methods and process inefficiencies. As a result, companies become exposed to unnecessary risks and costs, and miss out on opportunities to add business value.

Email is vital in business communications. Companies worldwide are dependent upon it. It is used to communicate with customers and employees on a daily basis. At the same time that companies are generating huge volumes of email, cyber criminals are targeting email knowing that it is a data form rich in valuable personal and corporate information. In spite of measures taken by companies and organizations to protect against spam, viruses, spyware and other online threats, most of these efforts have only been partially successful at best. It is a constant challenge to stay ahead of the spammers and malware writers. Fortunately, there are new methods available to help companies more effectively secure their email and other valuable data.

This paper considers how Web-based security threats are evolving, within the context of IT trends including mobile, home computing and other forms of remote access that could all potentially increase the attack surface of the organisation.

At first comparison, spyware and computer viruses might appear to have more in common than not. They are both malicious programs, they both impact system stability, and the effects of both can range from being a nuisance to infl icting serious damage. They are also both programs that require specialized tools for their removal. And while these two different types of malicious programs might closely resemble each another at first glimpse, there are significant differences.

Over time, many fundamental business activities – marketing, advertising, customer support, research – have become Web dependent. At the same time, the Web is now considered the number one delivery mechanism for malware. This poses a significant security challenge to companies around the world. Compounding that challenge is the advent of interactive Web technologies known as Web 2.0 (blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and similar elements that are woven together to form Web pages), which make it all the more challenging to differentiate legitimate content from those that pose a threat.