Security policies: misuse of resources

According to surveys conducted in Europe and the United States, company employees spend up to 30% of their working hours on private affairs. By multiplying the hours spent on non-business-related things by the average cost of the working hour, the analysts estimate the costs to companies amounting to millions of dollars a year. Indirect losses may be even higher. If these employees – inadvertently or otherwise – assist hack attacks or identity theft, cause reputational damage or infringe copyright, the costs could be even greater.

The fact is that employees often use office computers to communicate on social networking sites, share links to online entertainment, or download files from suspicious resources. At the same time cybercriminals are actively using social networking sites for phishing and the distribution of malware. Many personal blogs, entertainment sites, file sharing services, torrent trackers, and files downloaded from them are infected. Passwords to email accounts are regularly hacked or stolen.

This article describes some problems which may arise from the improper use of office computers and demonstrate how to prevent similar incidents in the corporate network.

Targeted attacks

The threats that users face every day usually target mass audiences so the antivirus solution on their computers is enough to prevent most accidents. Targeted attacks are different: they are performed secretly, often using a non-standard approach; they are highly sophisticated and well organized. To achieve their goals the fraudsters use the most effective weapon to exploit any available software or social vulnerability.

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