E-Mail Threats and Vulnerabilities

 There is incredible increase of malware, threats and vulnerabilities by email. These threats are found in form of worms and Trojans that can seriously affect the performance of your system. Most of these threats are sent in hidden file extension that is unable to understand for common users. The common use of email in all matters of life has given hackers a way to distribute threats and vulnerabilities in the internet. It is very easy for hackers to circumvent the security implemented through firewalls. Emails are used to install worms and Trojans at your firm to get confidential information and control over your services. Instructive virus can easily infect your computer through email.

Companies fail to acknowledge the risk of crucial data stolen within their network set ups. Staff usually sent such emails that contain offensive, sexist and racist material. Such type of emails can make your firm vulnerable in the eyes of public.

Malicious attachment and contents: Loveletter and Mellissa are such type of viruses that illustrate infection with attachments and contents of emails. They send such emails with the use of trust that exists between colleagues and friends. These viruses become active when a user opens attractive attachments named as me.pif and sexpic.

Email triggering: Virus known as Class ID allows hackers to hide the real extension of the file. They conceal the file extension of cleanfile.jpg that is a nasty html file. Another worm named as Nimda circumvents various email security tools and breaks up corporate networks and servers. It enters computer in form of vulnerable version of outlook express and internet explorer.

HTML mail: These days, there is widespread use of html email that includes active contents and scripts. These embedded scripts allow code and programs to execute on client computer. Some viruses based on html scripts can easily add to your machine when mail is opened. It is useless to trust on email security regarding attachment check.  B virus and BadTrans virus combined with html, try to propagate your system with malicious infection.

Why anti-virus software or a firewall is not enough

Some firms install firewalls and antivirus software for security. It is an effective way for the protection of intranet. However, firewalls cannot check the contents of email that is sent and received by authorized users. It shows that email threats and vulnerabilities can easily pass through your security system. In the same manners, virus protection software cannot protect all email attacks.

Solution:

Multi-tier security system is needed to tackle complex security issues. You need to implement content orientated and communication countermeasures like firewall, antivirus, intrusion, anti-spam, IM/P2P and web content filtering both at branch offices and head quarters of your firms. It will form a family of multi-layered security appliances. It is essential to set countermeasures in form of software that fit for fixed and mobile endpoints like laptops, desktops and smart phones. Applications related to specific software gateways provide customize and advanced protection for email and web hosting. These are some effective counter measures for the security of your organization that will save you from various threats and vulnerabilities.

Detecting And Stopping Network Attacks

A network attack is the type of malicious attempt to damage the security of network. There are many reasons of hackers attack on corporate networks. These network attacks are referred as hackers or crackers attacks. Various malicious and hackers activities are as follow:

• Illegal use of user’s privileges and accounts
• Steal of software code
• Steal of hardware
• Execution of code to damage current system
• Execution of code to corrupt and damage data
• Modification of store data
• Attempts to deplete bandwidth and network resources

The reasons of attacking on networks

Some people want to seek some sort of fame through their action of crashing websites. There are some possible motives that invoke them for network attacks.

• Politics
• Terrorism
• Industrial espionage
• Greed
• Criminal payoffs
• Racism

There are four types of network attacks that include:

• Internal attacks
• External attacks
• Unstructured attacks
• Structured attacks