While the openness of the Internet has been a revelation in terms of helping business spread around the world and in bringing people closer together it has sadly also created a raft of new threats. Viruses, Trojans, phishing and bot-nets are all horrible terms that you now have to deal with. Many of these threats are also now completely automated in their manner of delivery. The sad truth is that if you were to connect an un-protected web or database server to the Internet it would easily become compromised within one hour such is the prevalence of online infection. We advise and supply solutions to clients to help mitigate these insidious problems.

The first step in protecting most online systems is the proper installation and maintenance of a “firewall”. This is a device that controls the type of communication allowed in and out of an online network. For example you might want to allow request for web pages to come into a web server but not request for other services that might cause problems. The set of rules for what can and cannot pass through the firewall is know as a “firewall policy”. We work with a variety of firewall vendors to find systems that are most appropriate for each case.

Authentication and disclosure of information is another major issue and we work with a variety of technologies to ensure our client’s sites protect their customers. For authentication we use systems such as Active Directory and Kerberos and to avoid disclosure (revealing sensitive information such as financial information) we use public/private key cryptography like secure SSL certificates,

All the above measures are rendered useless if the website itself has open “back-doors” to unscrupulous parties and we can provide independent security audits of sites to test for such as vulnerabilities such as “SQL injection”.