Cyber Security
Murray Street Mall - Perth, Western Australia
The state of the security union By Joseph Wentzel
32 | Australian Security Magazine
A
s I look back over the years, one thing stands out. Sales people selling things people don’t need or can’t afford. It hasn’t just been the fear of having your wife run down by a huge lorry as her 3.5 litre six-cylinder car wouldn’t accelerate as fast as a V8 or being hopelessly antiquated with last year’s model of something. It is the fear of not being secure. Hackers in our PCs that will destroy everything that we have. We have all heard the security fears, in nearly every aspect of our lives. We give in to it. Why else would we all be taking off our shoes when we fly to or from the United States? As I write this the Murray Street Mall in Perth, Australia, is closed down by police due to a suspicious package. Some of these security concerns are very real. Some of them will probably end up being a backpack left behind. Not too long ago, I was doing a bit of shopping in either a Circuit City or Best Buy (this was in America, but you can pretend it was Harvey Norman or JB HiFi). I couldn’t help overhearing a lady purchasing a laptop for her teenage son to do school work on. There was a great special on one with very decent specs for the time and costing about $400 ($475AUD). Of course the salesperson was very helpful, but also fear mongering. She would need anti-virus, as there is just so much malware on the Internet, Anti-spyware to keep snoops from reading her financial data over the web, a personal firewall to keep her home safe from bad guys entering over her cable connection and so on. To be fair, she did need protection, but was this really right? Did she have to spend an extra $200 to allow a laptop to be safely used? Did she really need to pony up another $200 or so for MS Office? This simple $400 computer was going to set her back over $800. A used car salesman would be green with envy. Most modern operating systems come with anti-virus/ anti-spyware. While many 3rd party ones are arguably better, are they worth the cost to the average home user? Probably
not. Her NAT router (supplied by her cableTV company would probably be strong enough that she wouldn’t need a separate firewall (and if she does, there is also one in MS Windows). As for Office, this is a bit more debateable. There are many free office products (OpenOffice, LibreOffice and others), but there are also reduced priced versions of MS Office (Home and Student), the student version of Office might even be free from the child’s school. I haven’t exactly painted the salesperson in a very good light, but they really didn’t deserve to look good. Unfortunately, we probably deserve much of the same criticism. I’ve been in this field 35 years and find myself doing much the same (but luckily I catch myself doing it nowadays) Users seek us out for advice. That computer might as well be a magic box to many of them. Do we really give them advice based on what they need, or what we like? How often do we recommend Linux to a relative novice (I like Linux, but is it really appropriate for someone who has a hard time logging into a Windows PC at work), or suggest a 4-500 dollar wireless router with enough antennas it could almost be a work of surrealistic art, just to allow them to jump onto their new 25Mb NBN connection (one of the lowest fibre rates here in AU). All of this is reasonable to us as we saved them $50-$80 on the price of the O/S, they didn’t need a Cisco AP with a Wireless LAN Controller, so there is another grand or two saved. LibreOffice saved them $50 over MS Office, so we really have their best interests in mind. Our recommendation of a major AV manufactured seems quite reasonable (although risky) compared to their not having a proper Threat Management System. I think back to my Dad. He could barely work the TV remote, but wanted to be able to email and look at Facebook. His friends at the VFW (American version of the RSL) were all online. What is the right solution for him?