Gartner - Half Of All Small Firms Will Be Hacked

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/156531.html

By Dick Kelsey, Newsbytes
STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT, U.S.A.,
11 Oct 2000, 5:11 PM CST

Without taking a few precautions, smaller companies stand a 50-50
chance of suffering an Internet attack by 2003, a Gartner Group Inc.
[NYSE:IT] study says.

Half of small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) using the Internet for
more than e-mail and handling their own network security will be
hacked or hit by viruses. More than 60 percent of the victimized
companies won't even know they've been attacked, the study said.

John Pescatore, Gartner's research director for Internet security,
told Newsbytes that 80 percent of SMEs are vulnerable to such problems
but some are so low-profile that there's little chance of attack. If
it does happen, however, some sites are knocked offline for extended
periods of time and in a few cases, forever, he said.

"It's not unusual to see some whose Web site has been attacked down
for several days," Pescatore said. "One site went live at noon, was
down by 6, and they found that their servers were riddled with hacker
programs."

Gartner said SMEs should have a security firm conduct an audit and do
a risk assessment of their networks at least once per year and
whenever the enterprise makes major changes to its site or firewall.
They should also be sure proper firewalls are installed with a base
level of security; scan incoming e-mail for viruses using either
desktop or server-side antiviral protection measures; SMEs that
provide dial-in access to e-mail and other enterprise systems should
use consolidated modem pools and remote access servers instead of
desktop modems.

Such measures will protect more than two-thirds of Internet-connected
SMEs, Gartner says, warning that more sensitive sites - those of law
firms, banks, government agencies - should set up additional
safeguards.

Gartner Group is on the Web at http://www.gartner.com


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