hacking

A year of networking dangerously: Security breaches at the brink

Ask network administrators what their biggest concerns are over the next several months, and most will quickly rattle off such things as bandwidth optimization, network reliability and remote access management.

When the day is done, however, and they are sitting in the comfort of their homes, away from control consoles and dashboards, their real worry is network security. Who is gaining unauthorized access to the network right now, and how much data is at risk because of an impending breach?

There is no valid way to measure just how many networks are violated each day and data stolen or corrupted, since most companies decline to go public with that information unless it results in criminal prosecution. Most prefer not to admit that their seemingly secure networks were breached unless they can also say they got the culprit.

Ironically, the only way to put a dent in cybercrime may be to fess up when it happens and let the world know just how prevalent the problem is within the sanctums of businesses large and small. Such efforts won’t stop network security breaches, but they may provide common ground for companies at least to slow it down.

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