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23rd June 2008 The finance industry needs to keep its eye on the small change as well as the bigger picture of its security vulnerabilities Read More

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23rd April 2008 Patch management is a vital security requirement for any organsation Read More
Date: 30th October 2004
Risk: Medium

Prevention is better than cure to combat extortion threats

The growing prevalence of extortion attacks calls for a fundamental rethink in how companies approach their security, warns specialist Internet security testing firm, NTA Monitor.

Roy Hills, Technical Director, NTA Monitor comments: "Prevention is better than cure. The cost of extortion demands range between £5,000 to anything over £50,000. If you compare this to the average cost of £20,000 for a total security package, it makes clear, financial sense to put security infrastructure in place as preventative measure."

Attempts at extortion have included ransoming vital tapes, locking out legitimate users from computers, logic bombs and viruses. The essence of a good preventative policy is to know that your systems are secure and there's no way in for a hacker. Also know your systems well enough to be able to neutralise the extortive demand by having a method of recovery that the extortionist has not anticipated. Most blackmailers are caught when they try to pick up their 'ransom' money.

"We strongly advise companies to take on regular testing and auditing of their security by a testing provider - both on their networks and their eCommerce systems," says Hills. "New vulnerabilities come out all the time, so make sure this testing is at least quarterly."

But the blackmail demand isn't the main cost that companies face with an extortion attack. The loss of business and reputation if a site is brought down is a far greater financial burden. The "Costs of Enterprise Downtime"* study from Infonetics Research found that companies could lose up to £60,000 per hour of downtime.

Hills continues: "This figure is only likely to get higher, so the cost of being hit by one of these attacks is substantial. Recently, one UK company was reported to be losing £1m ($1.66m) a day in lost business as its service remained down. Although you can never be 100% certain that your systems are secure, testing them goes a long way to reducing the potential success of an attack."

If a company is unfortunate enough to fall prey to an extortion threat, NTA Monitor offers the following advice:

  1. Contact the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit straight away
  2. Enlist the help of a specialist Internet security testing company to check for security holes
  3. DO NOT pay the extortion demand - there's no guarantee that if you pay they'll stop there