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Security in the E-Business Age - Dave Ryan, COO, NTT America
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| The Internet has changed the way we do business forever. What we did on paper can now be done online, saving time and improving productivity. Despite dot-com turmoil, there is no stopping online B2B trade growth and companies' use of Net-based technology and applications, which are expected to generate big productivity boosts to the U.S. economy in the next decade. The e-business age, however, also has a downside. In addition to old workplace problems, companies now have to worry about employees' behavior on the Net and abuse of corporate network resources. Casual email exchanges are often overlooked or go unnoticed, but pose a serious concern, not least because of the danger of virus infection. Firewalls can't stop leaks and it is difficult to screen all email exchanges without impeding companies' day-to-day business operations. There is also an issue at the receiving end: unsolicited commercial ("spam") emails are a time-consuming distraction for employees as well as a network resource drain and have become a big problem for many companies. Other than the general steps of combatting these problems with a multi-disciplinary task force, educating our employees of the purpose of company Web and email policies and creating documented defense policies, NTT America is taking specific actions against mail abuse and viruses. We use updated services that compile blacklists of spammers and servers targeted by spammers, automatically rejecting any mails coming from blacklisted addresses. Our system scans both incoming and outgoing emails for virus infection, in order to prevent our server originating or spreading any virus. NTTA's mail servers (pop, smtp) self-scan every hour, which prevents any damage coming from other time zones outside of work hours. |