The Russians are coming: hackers target small firms

Published on Saturday 19 September 2009 13:46

UK SMALL to medium sized businesses have been put on alert that they are the new target for cyber-hacking attacks masterminded by Russian criminal networks.

The British Retail Consortium estimates that, while the high street continues to struggle, online sales are booming and now worth 130 billion a year, and that a significant proportion of that involves trading by smaller businesses.

The UK is labelled the online capital of Europe with a higher spend per capita than the US. This fact has not gone unnoticed by internet-based criminals viewing such a healthy return in finances as rich pickings.

Microsoft staged a private corporate technology summit in London last week, when new intelligence was released showing the East European gangs were now switching their attentions to firms outside the blue chip arena.

The software giant plans to issue a key report in November that will show smaller businesses in the UK remain largely ill-equipped to detect and combat internet-based fraud.

Doug Cavit, the company's chief global security strategist, said that up until now illegal online activity has largely targeted the now beleaguered financial services sector and that smaller companies are in the hackers' sights. He said the report will highlight that online password theft has emerged as by far the prime target area, with such activity currently up one third compared with the end of last year.

Firms are advised to be wary of playing fast and loose with their passwords, especially when it involves third party/outsourced partners' IT security.

"An organisation having to cope with many different groups in the course of its daily work can prove unwieldy. So make sure you define proper security protocols as you manage your company and your people. The trouble is that, more often than not, smaller firms' IT systems are not sophisticated and so are relatively easy to hit," he said.

The government launched a Cabinet-level Office of Cyber Security on September 1. The centre's security adviser, Steve Marsh, told the conference that a key aspect of their work will be to monitor internet risks to business.

Lesley Kipling, who heads up Microsoft's 160-strong team of "cyber-crime cracking" engineers made the link between the danger to small firms from illegal gangs operating from the former Soviet Union.

She said it was likely that Russian business networks are behind a new wave of attacks launched on the net, and repeated the warning to firms to check that business critical IT systems operated by out-sourced partners are up to scratch.

Kipling told executives from Accenture, Aviva, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BT, Canon, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley that tussles between business and commerce and cyber-hackers represent what amounts to an ongoing online war.