phion News: Challenges and trends in IT security

The Middle East edition (issue number 1/Q4, 2007) of bm- business management discusses trends and developments in the security environment in a discussion forum. Participants included Klaus Gheri, CTO and co-founder of phion, as well as representatives from Juniper Networks, RSA and Arbor Networks. When asked about the current threat situation, Klaus Gheri noted that while the number of widely-spread, broadly based virus outbreaks has fallen, many more targeted attacks are now being launched by cyber criminals motivated by financial interests.
Gheri observes a shift in awareness among those responsible within companies for security: While the focus was mainly on perimeter protection for a long time, organisations are now beginning to acknowledge the necessity of protecting internal networks and web-based business applications. A high number of the current security threats arise within organisations. Security incidents are caused by mobile and wireless devices, internal hacking and misuse of business applications by users within organisations. In addition there is the increasing risk posed by fast developments in web-based technologies, whose protocols are highly vulnerable to attacks.
In order to facilitate comprehensive protection for communications, explains Gheri, organisations must consider security and business continuity aspects. A purely technological approach is not sufficient here. What is required is comprehensive risk management from a broad business perspective. This is the only way of following a successful course for a sensible business strategy to minimise risks.

phion News: Risk factor - Community portals

In the November issue of it&t business, there are warnings about the corporate security risks resulting from social network services. It is almost standard practice today that portals such as Xing or LinkedIn are used by many people as an extended CRM tool for contact management. In this context, Wieland Alge, CEO and co-founder of phion, points out that the communications here are encrypted, similar to online banking. And he adds: “People are sufficiently aware of the security loop holes related to online banking, but the risks associated with the networking portals are often not taken seriously enough.” This danger is addressed with the enhanced content security functions in phion netfence by making SSL encrypted data traffic and XML services controllable.