Hackers: Barbarians at Your Corporate Gate
The risk of hackers penetrating your company’s database and exposing your commercial secrets – if not some dirty linen as well – was brought home recently when the internal musings of Britain’s leading climate science research centre were laid bare. Thousands of private emails between top climate change scientists were made public, revealing the bitter disagreements over the cause of this contentious phenomenon. It’s like a paper trail from hell. Whether or not your company is involved in a controversial industry, make sure that hackers don’t plant malware in your system that allows them to monitor what you’re doing until they feel the time is right for a massive exposé. Computer forensics and a host of other state-of-the-art technology can save you from such an ignominious fate.
The climactic downpour in the UK, which included some 2,000 emails and 3,000 related documents, first appeared online on November 20, courtesy of an anonymous Russian server. While there’s nothing surprising about that, there is in the degree of spite that some of the communications display. One top man at the Climate Research Unit, based at the University of East Anglia, wrote in 2004 that he was “cheered” by the news that a prominent climate change sceptic in Australia had suddenly died of a heart attack. Another says he would like to meet his adversaries in a dark alley one night. Other experts refer to their colleagues in highly unflattering terms.
Scientists who support the theory of man-made climate change are lined up against their heretical opponents, each side armed to the teeth and ready to fight the War of Roses all over again. One rues the fact that his team can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, which he sees as a travesty. He cites data published only a few months ago that shows that there should be even more warming. The data must surely be wrong, he suggests. The sceptics hurl missiles back, claiming that the emails are evidence of a conspiracy to bully into submission those who challenge the man-made hypothesis. With Copenhagen just around the corner, something is clearly rotten in the State of Denmark.
This is ugly business, but imagine it transposed to your company environment. Internal schisms over whether or not to proceed with a major corporate project could, if exposed, see your share price plummet. Confidence in your capacity to complete it successfully would be shattered. Picture too, a public dump with a strong dash of morality. The climate emails came with a hacker’s message saying, “We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence.”
This sort of predicament simply can’t be avoided by pleading with your company colleagues to feel more compassion for each other, or to use more temperate language. If you think it could happen to your firm, then call in a team of professionals without delay. They’ll undertake a forensic analysis of your company’s activities, screen your computer system and its databases and generally tighten up your whole operation. Make sure they have a proven track record in this sophisticated field. If they do, you’ll be able to sleep easy, free from Russian nightmares.
