In a recent discussion with the PH IT media, Netpoleon Philippines shared how the steady progress of virtual crimes can now go beyond the cyber realm and directly affecting people’s lives.
Francis Goh, Managing Director of Netpoleon Group of Companies, compared this unsettling development to a scene in the film “The Matrix” where the character Agent Smith (who is a computer program) got out of the system into the real world.
Goh shared to us that even a pacemaker can be hacked, including your automated car, airplane and a nuclear plant.
He also pointed out last year’s big Sony incident, where vast amount of data including personal information of Sony Pictures employees, emails and correspondence among the workforce, information about executives’ salaries, and copies of then-unreleased Sony films were leaked for public consumption.
The hack resulted in the scrapping of major deals and plans, media and public frenzy from the uncovered confidential information, and a huge loss in revenues from the stolen films, amounting to hundreds of dollars in total damage.
This case of a massive data breach on an entertainment company, according to Goh, put a renewed focus on network security.
“We should be looking at this security situation in a different perspective. It is not about viruses anymore,” Goh reiterated as he recalls some experts’ opinions of how the Sony hack was made using an orchestrated attack that has the hallmarks of an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT).
Status of the current cyber war
The media session with Netpoleon executives in the Philippines was done simultaneously with the company’s annual conference last October 14 at the Dusit Thani Hotel in Makati.
The event — aptly called the Netpoleon Solutions Day — advocates consciousness and understanding of current cyber security threats and its effects on enterprises as well as the general public.
Corporate organizations, NGOs, and government bodies who are all most likely to be targeted by such threats were present in the one-day symposium.
This year’s theme dealt with mastering the Art of Defense, emphasizing the need for organizations across various industries to devise a solid defense strategy that would safeguard their data and assets in the ongoing war against cyber criminals.
Industry specialists from some of Netpoleon’s partner vendors — namely Arbor Networks, A10 Networks, BlueCat Networks, Blue Coat Systems, Brocade Communications Systems, CheckPoint Software Technologies, Dell Sonic Wall, and HP Enterprise Security — shared their expertise on modern cyber attacks and offered possible security solutions that could counter such assaults.
“With this annual Solutions Day, we are trying to promote the awareness of companies on security issues to make sure that they spend time thinking about these things,” stressed Goh.
