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Business and cyber-crime: Firewalls and firefights

August 9, 2013 at 3:04 am | News Desk

“IF SOMEONE is shooting at you, the last thing you should focus on is the calibre of the bullet,” says George Kurtz, the boss of CrowdStrike, a young tech company. Seated at a coffee table at Black Hat, a conference for the cyber-security industry held in Las Vegas recently, Mr Kurtz is expounding on the fundamental flaw he sees in the way many firms deal with cyber-intrusions. Most, he says, spend too much time trying to work out what hit them and far too little trying to understand the motivations of their attackers and how to counter future assaults.CrowdStrike is a vocal advocate of “active defence” technologies that are generating much buzz in the cyber-security world. Their proponents argue that those who think firewalls, antivirus programmes and other security software are enough to keep their networks safe are kidding themselves. Instead, companies should work on the assumption that their systems have been breached, and take the fight to the hackers. The methods they prescribe include planting false information on their systems to mislead data thieves, and creating “honeypot” servers, decoys that gather information about intruders.There are worries that…
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