What is Internet Protective Monitoring?
It's every director's nightmare, your most valuable customer database has ended up in your competitors hands. Even worse it was sent out from a computer on your network by a disgruntled employee. It could have been credit card data or medical records, it might even have been leaked by mistake.
Do you remember the United States of America V Randall Edward Schuster case?
Schuster made an unauthorised copy of his employer's customer database and attempted to sell the database to a competitor. Schuster accessed the database, copied it, evaluated it and then decided what information would be valuable to the competitors. Schuster then researched the competitors, contacted the potential buyers and mailed a portion of the database before negotiating the final sale of the database. After pleading guilty upon arrest and after appealing to reduce his sentence for mail fraud, theft of government property, and stolen property, Schuster received four months imprisonment, four months home confinement and two years supervised release.
Schuster’s punishment pales into significance compare to the damage done to the organisation. The loss of these sensitive materials meant that they lost potential as well as existing customers, acquired a tarnished reputation and gave an advantage to their competitors. Don't let any thing like this happen to you.
Internet Protective Monitoring is the application of techniques that inspect the contents of the packets of data flowing in and out of your network to the internet looking for any form of unauthorised activity. This includes inbound malware attacks from corrupt web sites as well as the leakage of sensitive information, perhaps in emails, such as credit card numbers or customer data files. Having detected such undesirable behaviour an effective Protective Monitoring system will at least alert the system owners to the security problem and with more advanced systems will actually prevent malware getting into your system or sensitive data getting out. There are three ways of applying such Protective Monitoring (PM) techniques,
Install PM Software modules onto each of your computers linked to a common management supervisor.
Install PM appliances linked to a common management supervisor at the internet access points of your network system.
Divert all your internet traffic through an external PM monitoring and supervision system.
Protective Monitoring systems are a form of Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDSs and IPSs) which are increasingly relied upon as malware becomes ever more prevalent. These devices are essential to prevent certain types of attacks as they work along side traditional security barriers, such as Firewalls and Anti-Virus software, adding to the effectiveness of the existing countermeasures provided. Protective Monitoring however goes a stage futher in that it can detect the loss of sensitive data as well as detecting patterns of data behaviour from multiple sources even at different times.
Protective Monitoring systems are also able to record the events of any attacks and provide audit trails, allowing further investigation as required.
Protective Monitoring devices can be configured to protect (detect and stop) against:- The attempted introduction of malware
- Attempts to breach access control systems
- Leakage of sensitive information from within a corporate or domestic network (DLP, Data Loss Prevention)
- Attacks against servers and network devices such as routers and firewalls
- Unauthorised data in email
- Unauthorised data in social networking sessions
- Unauthorised web activity
- Sending or receiving of pornographic material
- Behaviour consistent with racism, sexuality or bullying
- Paedophile internet grooming through social networking
The MirKatz Network Defence Units are designed to provide a rich combination of signature and heuristic technologies for Protective Monitoring in government, commercial and domestic environments.
MirKatz Network Defence Units
One clear example of protective monitoring in a natural environment is the altruistic behaviour shown by meerkats. Meerkats demonstrate altruistic behaviour within their colonies on a day to day basis. One or more meerkats will stand sentry (on lookout) whilst other members of the clan forage or play, warning them of any dangers that are approaching.
When a predator is spotted, the meerkat performing as sentry gives a warning bark, alerting the other members of the apparent dangers, allowing the members of the gang to run and hide in one of it's many bolt holes across their territory. The sentry meerkat is the last to run down the bolt hole and is the first to reappear from the burrow and search for predators, constantly barking to keep the other members of the clan underground. If there is no threat, the sentry meerkat will stop signalling and the others feel safe to emerge from the bolt holes.
In the same way that the meerkat demonstrates this altruistic behaviour dail, MirKatz offer a range of products to protectivley monitor networks in the Commercial and Domestic environments.
The MirKatz NDU-330 (Enterprise)
The MirKatz Network Defence Unit-330 (NDU-330) is specifically designed to suit the requirements of a government, financial or commercial environment. Apart from protecting the organisation against internet malware attacks the unit is able to safeguard valuable data such as employee details, customer databases and income & revenue details. The MirKatz NDU-330 device also allows authorised users full management capability.
The MirKatz NDU-330 device can be tailored to suit the needs of organisations in the government, financial and commercial sectors. The devices are currently available in English only, however if additional or alternative languages are required, please contact one of our advisors at Microexpert, where we will be happy to help you further.
For further information about the MirKatz NDU-330 device, please click on the link below, where you will be redirected to our MirKatz website:
www.mirkatz.com
MirKatz NDU-007 (Domestic)
The MirKatz Network Defence Unit-007 (NDU-007) has been specifically designed for the needs of the family in a domestic environment by safeguarding family members from the threats of the internet across the whole home network. In the same way as a meerkat sentry, the NDU-007 will alert parents of any undesired or unauthorised content exchange on the internet including bullying and themes of a sexual nature as well as blocking the compromise of confidential information such as credit card numbers and personal address data. The NDU-007 is particularly configured to detect internet grooming attempts by paedophiles. Parents can be alerted by email or SMS messages.
The MirKatz NDU-007 device can be uniquely created to suit the individual requirements of parents and authorised users in the domestic environment. The devices are currently available in English only, however if additional or alternative languages are required, please contact one of our advisors at Microexpert, where we will be happy to help.
For further information about the MirKatz NDU-007 device, please click on the link below, where you will be redirected to our MirKatz website:
www.mirkatz.com
