The hackers are getting smarter

There is no such thing as 100% security, but there are ways for businesses to better protect themselves.

In the latest cyber attack to hit the videogame industry, Sega said an intruder stole the personal information of nearly 1.3 million users of its online service from a company database last week. ReutersShow less

George Hotz, an American hacker, was taken to court by Sony in the US last January for bypassing copyright laws on the PlayStation 3, rendering it capable of running unauthorised software.

Three months later, the Japanese electronics giant experienced its biggest security breach when more than 100 million PlayStation Network users had their credit card and personal data compromised, costing the company an estimated US$172 million (Dh631.75m) when it shut down the service.

The breach occurred after Sony experienced "denial of service" attacks, which involved the use of software to generate a high number of communication requests that paralysed the servers and exposed PlayStation Network users' information.

The company accused the so-called "hacktivist" group Anonymous of carrying out the attacks in retaliation for Mr Hotz being sued. (The matter was later settled out of court). Anonymous also targeted MasterCard and Visa in December for withdrawing from the WikiLeaks websitea service that allowed for online donations to Julian Assange's organsisation.

Rik Ferguson, a "certified ethical hacker" and an adviser to the security software company Trend Micro, says this type of online activism is not new, but what is different, he says, is how the onslaughts have taken place, and the scale on which they have occurred.

Denial of service attacks have traditionally involved a hacker hijacking another person's computer to use it as a "botnet" to carry out attacks. But the attacks of late have involved people coordinating en masse using their own computers as botnets.

"If you try to find an allegory in the physical world, I suppose the closest thing you can find that resembles a volunteer botnet attack would be something like a sit-in where people just go and occupy a building or a space in order to cause an inconvenience," says Mr Ferguson.

Justin Doo, the director at Symantec for security practices in emerging markets, says hackers are not necessarily based in the perceived hot hacking spots of Eastern Europe and Asia.

He also believes potential hacktivists exist in the UAE and elsewhere in the Middle East, and that organisations in the region have been compromised but that the public may not have been told about it.

"We know that the breaches do take place here, they must do, because they happen everywhere else," says Mr Doo.

But what can UAE companies do to try to safeguard their systems and prevent these kinds of serious embarrassments from happening in the first place?

Many organisations have security software, firewalls and their own servers in which their data are stored.

Yet Mr Doo says there is the risk of "leaked data" or "toxic subsets", where data escape the confines of an organisation's network.

"On your laptop, what would you have if you had to leave that unlocked in the middle of Starbucks in Abu Dhabi tomorrow? What information on that laptop could compromise the brand and the reputation of your business?" he asks.

To reduce that risk, Mr Ferguson says only those who need data should have access to it, and they should be able to read or edit the information only if it is essential they do so.

Something else that business owners or employees can do to help to protect their organisations is to be careful about what subjects they blog about or the information they reveal about their work on social networks.

Good security planning involves assuming that a security breach will occur and that ultimately, no system is safe, analysts say.

"There's no such thing as 100 per cent security - that's kind of an axiom in the world of security," says Mr Ferguson.

"The most secure PC is one that isn't connected to any network, that doesn't have a power cable attached to it, and is in a room with no doors and no windows."