Spyware

Can My Business Be Affected?

It probably already is. Infestation estimates range from 60% to 90% of all computers using the Internet. Those estimates include businesses, and almost all business operations in the U.S. use the Internet to perform necessary business functions. Email, Web site development and maintenance and E-commerce are but a few categories. Without a computer these days, most businesses would never be able to maintain their competitive edge or even remain in business. No matter if you operate a small office home office as a sole proprietor, or a own a small business with 100 employees on a network, spyware can negatively impact your productivity, and a loss of productivity means a loss of money.

Types Of Spyware

These hacker tools can get into your computer’s operating system in several ways. Common ways include piggybacking on email attachments sent by associates who may not know that their own computers are infected. The applications attaches itself to the email attachments while in transit, and when opened are released into your own computer system. Without some sort of protection or blocking tool, once spyware gets into your system, it’s going to stay there hiding in the background, generally undetected until your operations slow to a crawl as computing power is redirected to hacker tasks. At the minimum this is an annoyance. At worse, your PC can be converted into a zombie slave that hackers can use to send email for profit, or spread viruses to other computers across the network.

Other annoying program includes the drive-by download type where a pop up window appears and attempts to install itself on your system. Depending upon the browser you use, you may not get any warning before the program is installed. Even clicking on a “No thanks!” button doesn’t help to prevent this. Most applications are designed to become activated when you click on this button. A safer bet is to click the red “X” button in the right hand upper corner of the document window.

Business owners often wonder why their networks are becoming infested. Mostly it’s because of employees who open mini-applications or pages while surfing. Sometimes it’s because of software downloads designed to improve a toolbar with some sort of productivity task enhancer. This group includes browser hijackers which dig deep into your PC and attempt to use your PC for tasks of its own.

Another type of hacker application is just as nasty. These are the anti-spyware windows that appear telling you that your system has been infected and asks the user to click on a button to clean the offensive parasite off his computer. Once you click, however, you install the spyware into your system instead.

The Effects

The effects of these technology parasites are as creative as the hackers who write the code. Upon startup, some spyware hogs RAM (Random Access Memory) and processor power to slow system operation. Others allow an endless stream of open windows that renders your browser unusable. Your home page can be reset to display an ad, or redirected it to another web page and modify the DLLs (Dynamically Linked Libraries) used to connect your PC to the internet, creating connectivity failures that can make life for your IT team miserable, since they are hard to diagnose and isolate.

The reasons some spyware exists are economic. Hackers want to hijack your computer and redirect it to a particular Web site to artificially inflate advertiser web traffic statistics, which means so much money per click. Another use is to snag your search request to view e-commerce Web sites so the hackers can take credit for sending you there.

No Longer A Hacker’s Game

These attacks have moved from closet geeks marking coup in the hacker community, to organized crime stealing from businesses, according to the FBI. Identity theft rings abound. Not as well reported are instances where business e-commerce operations are ‘hacked” and customers redirected to false Web sites identical to those of the business. Funds “paid” for products or services are stolen. Some businesses entire networks have been invaded and held hostage until they paid a ransom. These crimes are difficult to prosecute because most criminal organizations operate overseas where cooperation between the U.S. and other nations is lacking.

What Can You Do?

An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure. The best approach you can take is prevention. Once the application invades your system, it’s difficult if not impossible to remove. Using commercial anti spyware programs like Symantec’s Norton and McAfee, and Nod32 will help. You can use Free Spyware Removal Tools, and scanners like AVG, Spybot, Ad-Aware and Microsoft’s Defender. No one program is 100% effective. Each day, several new attacks occur, the result of which is constant updates by anti-spyware program developers.