 Your
worst security nightmare
It would be easy to say another Melissa virus or a distributed denial-of-service attack - probably from some jerk with a name like Kaos Kid - is bound to wreak havoc on corporate security defenses next year. But I’d argue that the bigger threat is simply the dissemination of false information about your company - information that could destroy everything you’ve worked to create. These lies spread quickly on the Web and in chat rooms, and can turn into an avalanche of bad publicity when picked up by "legitimate" news sources that don’t bother to check their facts. Take the case of Emulex, turned upside down in an instant last Aug. 25 by a news service called Internet Wire. The news service passed along an intentionally erroneous press release contending that Emulex would be revising earnings statements for the past three years from gains to losses, and that its CEO had quit. The information was picked up by news organizations Bloomberg and Dow Jones, and Emulex stock plunged more than 60% that morning. The bad news about Emulex was a hoax perpetrated by a former Internet Wire employee who was apparently speculating in Emulex stock. Robin Schnug, Emulex public relations manager, says she’s sure the news organizations that got fooled tried to verify the "facts" but when they couldn’t reach an Emulex contact, they repeated the bogus information anyway. Emulex now makes sure its staff is reachable through phone or beeper at any time. The news wires that disseminated the lie about Emulex were gullible, Schnug says. They didn’t use common sense to question why a corporation would issue such extraordinary news at an odd hour without the benefit of a press conference. The former Internet Wire employee, who was arrested, apparently posed as a public relations person on the phone and tricked a late-night Internet Wire crew into posting the fake release. As might be expected, Emulex believes news sources should bolster their security procedures. Of course, technologies such as secured servers, digital watermarks and public-key infrastructure certificates could add a level of trust to this kind of Web posting ... if anyone would ever bother to use them. Click below for more predictions
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By Ellen Messmer
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