Future Touch

We all know that the biggest threats for IT systems come from the Internet, computers being attacked with all kind of menaces, all the time. If a laptop or a desktop computer would not be connected to the World Wide Web, the only possible threats would be coming when data from external sources, like CD’s, DVD’S, memory sticks or cards etc. would be copied on the systems. So, it is important to choose the right application security for your network and use a powerful internet filter.

The dangers are not coming only from viruses, which are probably the most known, but also from hacker’s attacks, worms, spam etc. This is the reason why an application security must provide protection against all these menaces. So, it is wisely when you want to buy one protection appliance, to research about the possibilities that you have and decide only afterwards. Like a method of protection, you can use an Internet filter, which will allow you to control what websites can be visited, what kind of data could be downloaded, etc. Parents can use this application security really well, so their children would not be able to visit all kind of websites with violent images, or other negative things that could affect their well being.

An Internet filter can also be used by employers, so their employees wouldn’t lose time surfing the web. No matter why the application is bought, it is important to be easy to use. In this way, people with different levels of computer experience would be able to install it and use it at full capacity. Also, it is important to choose an application really effective at filtering data, in accordance with the buyer’s needs. A good Internet filter will offer daily reports about the activities everyone had on that computer.

People can evaluate these days the level of risk for each computer if they use an application security which allows them to replicate different attacks on a certain system. The vulnerability scanning appliance will determine in what way computers can be threatened and what are the right solutions for resolving these problems. It is a great application security because it helps people prevent potential losses and also perform assessments at regular periods of time. This way, they can understand better at what level the present status of the security system is and how it can be improved.

Nowadays, the Internet is a great source of information and education, but it can also pose certain threats. All these possible threats must be counteracted somehow. This is the reason why so many protection applications are now available on the market. But being multiple and diverse dangers many people opt for a single application security that includes protection for all possible problems. Such solution is represented by the United Threat Management – UTM that includes firewalls, anti-viruses, Internet filter, anti-spam technology etc. It is a really viable application and it has the advantage of being really simple to use. Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered why so many people opt for this solution more and more often these days.


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Information Security Policy Guidelines in your organization

By Ki Grinsing

In 1858, a telegram of 98 words from Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan of the United States opened a new era in global communication. The queen’s message of congratulation took 16½ hours to transmit through the new transatlantic telegraph cable. The president then sent a reply of 143 words back to the queen. Normally, without the cable, a dispatch in one direction would have taken perhaps 12 days by the speediest combination of inland telegraph and fast steamer.

Today, the speed of your message from UK to US could be as fast as you click the “send” button if you send a message via E-mail. Today, the organizations depend on the reliability of the system information.

Information is an asset which, like other important business assets, has value to the corporate and consequently needs to be suitably protected in reference to the management of the information security. Information security protects information from a wide range of threats in order to ensure business continuity and minimize business damage. Information security is achieved by implementing a suitable set of controls in the form of policies, procedures, organizational structures, systems and functions to ensure that the security objectives of the organization are met.

Information Security deals with a number of important concepts. Information security is concerned with ensuring the information security of all information and the systems, processes and procedures relating to the management and use of the information. Information may be in hard copy or soft copy stored on various types of information media such as diskettes, compact discs or computer networks.

Information has varying degrees of sensitivity and criticality. A great deal of information may need no, or only very low levels of security. However, other information may be commercially sensitive and will require higher levels of security. Information assets must be classified and managed according to their security requirements and to ensure that security controls are commensurate with the security risks. There is increasing dependence on information systems and on the exchange of information between Business Units and with business partners. This brings with it increasing exposure to security threats.

Information security should be applied to all corporate operations. Business Units are responsible for ensuring that their information assets are appropriately protected. All users have responsibility for the information security they utilize, and management must ensure that information security controls are properly implemented. Information security does not ensure security. However, the information security does provide a framework and reference point for management to implement appropriate information security controls, and is a means of raising awareness of users’ responsibilities relating to information security.

The potential consequences of an Information Security breach can:

Loss of life and injury Loss of shareholder confidence Interruption of business processes Financial loss Loss of client confidence Criminal charges Brand and reputation damage Litigation

General statement of information security policy

Information and its supporting processes, systems, and networks should be available to employees (and authorized third parties) to enable them to optimize their performance. Information must be subject to an appropriate level of control to protect it from loss, unauthorized manipulation or disclosure.

Objectives of information security standard policy:

Availability: To ensure that authorized users have access to information and its supporting processes, systems and networks when required. Integrity: To safeguard the accuracy and completeness of information and associated processing methods. Confidentiality: To ensure that information is accessible to only those authorized to have access.

Purpose of information security policy

Information security olicy provides a framework for management to implement and maintain a level of information security that is commensurate with information security risks. Its purpose is to ensure that:

Trust between Business Units and trading partners with whom share public and private networks are maintained. Information is secure and is protected in a manner that is commensurate with its level of sensitivity and security risk. Regulatory obligations are complied with, for example privacy legislation.

The following areas are those that need security guideline in regards to information security standard:

Careless talk



Careless Talk means:

Talking about business, the office, and people from work, etc where you can be overheard. Discussing business with people who are not authorized to know.

Careless talk also means providing sensitive information inadvertently to someone who wants it for a specific purpose such as breaking into the corporate premises or computer systems. This is called Social Engineering.

Before you talk to someone about your work and the corporate business you should ask yourself the following question:

Does this person have a defined ‘Need to Know’?

If they don’t have a Need to Know, then you should not talk to them about information they should not hear.

Email security guideline



Email is regarded as a critical component of the corporate communications system and is provided as a business tool. The security, confidentiality and integrity of Email cannot be guaranteed and certainly cannot be considered private. Due to this, you should act professionally and appropriately at all times.

If you need to send information that is sensitive or confidential and you cannot guarantee the email security, consider another method of sending this information, unless you have approved encryption.

Instant messaging guideline



Instant Messaging (IM) is a communication tool that provides for two-way communication in real-time. For the two-way communication to occur each person must use the same IM product such as ICQ, Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger (called Windows Messenger in Windows XP).

We cannot guarantee Instant Messaging security for the communications of the information, the security and integrity of information via Instant Messaging cannot be guaranteed, so do not discuss sensitive business or private and personal details using Instant Messaging.

Internet policy guideline



This access is a privilege and you are expected to act professionally and appropriately while using the Internet. What you do on the Internet can be monitored internally / externally and your actions can be traced back to the computer you are using.

Internet access is a business tool, so that’s why internet security policy should be developed as guidelines to support the business. Why?

Information and activities can be monitored and manipulated. Security of transmissions is not guaranteed. Information can be easily and uncontrollably distributed. Files downloaded from the Internet may contain viruses and other malicious programs.

Laptop security guideline



Laptops are very valuable organizational assets because they contain many work files that are important to the corporate and may contain sensitive business information, which must be protected at all times.

Office security guideline



The corporate business premises and office areas have a variety of physical security controls in place, however staff should be vigilant at all times. The corporate business premises and office areas have a variety of physical security controls in place, however staff should be vigilant at all times. The security guidelines should be developed to manage the following.

Strangers in the workplace Classified information / assets Clear desk Screen-saver or screen-lock Secure faxing Secure photocopying Virus scanning

Password security guideline



Your User ID, password and/or token provides you with access to information on the corporate computer systems, that only you should have access to, based on the Need to Know Principle. First guideline in password security is selecting a good password. A good password is something that cannot be easily guessed.

A mixture of: upper and lower case letters; numbers; and symbols At least 8 characters Should not be written down at any time Should not be shared with anyone else.

Knowing common passwords that are easy to guess is a good thing in password security guidelines. An easy to guess password is a word that you have chosen that is related to something that is commonly known about you or could be easily ascertained.

Secure media handling



Why Should You Destroy Media Securely? Media contains your organization’s information. Unauthorized people should not have access to your organizations information at any time. When you throw something in the rubbish or waste paper bin you do not know where it can end up when it leaves your office.

Spam security



Most of you would receive physical junk mail (adverts, brochures etc) in your mailbox at home. Spam is the electronic equivalent; however there are some differences between the hardcopy version of junk mail and the email version.

It would be extremely rare for you to receive pornography and other offensive hardcopy advertisements at home unsolicited, however Spam received via email often contains this type of material or information. Therefore, an anti spam security policy regulation is needed within an organization.

Virus security



If you think you’re totally safe from virus infection because of the antivirus scanning programs installed on the corporate IT systems – think again. Hundreds or maybe thousands of new viruses and worms are introduced into the ‘wild’ every week.

Therefore you must regularly update the system at the earliest with the update patch and critical security patches. For your organization, the automatic patch update is very important to deploy such as WSUS (windows server update services) system.


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The renowned PC World Innovation Award for SecPoint’s Penetrator (http://www.secpoint.com/secpoint-penetrator.html), speaks for itself. And the designation has delighted the owner of the enterprise, Victor Christiansenn.

“It is easy to win a general award, but an innovation award tells you that this really breaks new ground,” he says.

And breaking new ground is exactly what the Penetrator is doing. It was launched around New Year and has already proved its worth in several large enterprises and security organisations in Europe.

Integrated in an ordinary laptop computer, the Penetrator scans and detects possible vulnerabilities in any wireless business network, cracking any malicious codes and encryptions.

Indeed, the Penetrator not only detects vulnerabilities, it also presents a solution to the problem – or as PC World explains in its recognition of the device for the innovatory award: “It penetrates networks assessing not only their security level but also their resistance to ***********. In all of the tests, the Penetrator succeeded in finding all passwords and keys.”

Add to this that the Penetrator is extremely easy to use, even by individuals without any technical knowledge. This fact is reported on by a Greek magazine which tested and reviewed the product, recognising that: “The Penetrator is so user-friendly that you quickly get familiar with the product.”

And user-friendliness is indeed something that is rated highly by SecPoint, which is now, less than a year after launching its first Penetrator, ready to introduce an updated version that is even more user-friendly.

“It has cost us lot of working hours, but it is worth the toil when you get such fine reviews”, Christiansenn says.

As described above, the Penetrator is integrated in an ordinary laptop computer. Along with the effective protection against hackers, you therefore also get an ordinary working tool with Windows Vista and SecPoint’s traditional vulnerability scanning.

The price of the Penetrator is approximately €2,200, exclusive of VAT.

For further information, please contact: Managing Director Victor Christiansenn

Tel. +45-40 90 16 30

Email. victor@secpoint.com

Useful links:

http://www.secpoint.com/awards/PC_World_Innovation_Award.pdf

http://www.secpoint.com/awards/ITSecurity_Magazine_Review.pdf

http://www.secpoint.com/


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A technician, recently called me up to estimate storage capacity for Internet Caching. The technician, is a part of a team that will be responsible for setting up Internet Gateway for an ISP, in a small Middle-East country.

The technician had very limited numbers available, to do the necessary derivation. Thus he could phrase the question very simplistically -

“The ISP will be potentially serving 40,000 users. What should be the provisioned Data Storage Capacity, for content caching?”

Being a part of Team SafeSquid that builds Content Filtering Proxy, we often get this kind of a query, but with one major difference. Mostly queries are phrased like – “We have an Internet Pipe of X Mbps. What is the recommended Data Storage Capacity for most efficient caching?”

A reasonable advice to such a query can be derived, if we allow a few assumptions, and focus on some simple facts.

1. Only the Content that has been fetched over HTTP can be cached.

2. The maximum rate at which content can be fetched depends upon the Internet Pipe.

3. There is a lot of HTTP traffic that is un-cacheable, for example – streaming audio / video, pages that display results of any other SQL driven queries including search engine queries, and even HTML content in Web Mail.

4. Most important content that gets cached are HTML pages, embedded images, style-sheets, java scripts, and other files that you would have to download and execute, on the local desktop, or view with another viewing application, like PDF / Flash (some) files.

5. A simple request to view a web-page, with a normal browser, automatically triggers, downloads of a variety of content like cookies, images and other embedded objects. These are required, by the browser, to display the page, as per the page-design. All the components, that constitute the web-page may NOT necessarily be “sourced” from the web-site that was serving the requested web-page.

6. Modern Internet browsers, provide caching, that is user manageable, and is quite similar to the caching principles involved in the design of caching proxies. So each content or object may not be necessarily requested. But yes these browsers depend upon the availability of local storage, on the client systems, and is usually not over a few hundred Mbytes. And in any case, these local-caches are not shareable between different users.

7. Internet resources could have varying levels of utilization, depending upon time of the day, resulting in peak and off-peak hours.

Therefore if we have an Internet Pipe of 10Mbps, the max data we can transfer (data-throughput)

= 10Mbps x 60 seconds = 600 Mbits of data in a minute

= 600 x 60 = 36000 Mbits of data in an hour

Now suppose the enterprise uses a bandwidth manager, to reserve QoS for each pre-defined application (or protocol). Generally applications like SMTP & VPN are given the lion’s share, almost 50%, and the remaining gets shared between HTTP/HTTPS and others.

But I know of quite a few customers who would invest in pipes meant for exclusively SMTP and/or VPN, and a separate (cheaper) Internet connection for HTTP / HTTPS.

If the enterprise has chosen to host it’s web-server within it’s own business premises, then the entire distribution program, changes completely.

Even in case, the enterprise does not use a bandwidth manager, resulting in “first come, first serve”, we could still be guided by an estimated proportioning of traffic on the basis of applications or protocols.

So to build our algorithm, it might be practical, to coin a term – HTTP_Share, such that – HTTP_Share = x% of Internet Pipe.

Now, HTTP_Share would signify, the max data that would get transferred over HTTP traffic

Therefore, further to our earlier derivation, of 36000 Mbits of data throughput per hour, if we factor the HTTP_Share

HTTP_Traffic = x% of data-throughput

Now, if x = 35 (35% of overall data transfer was for HTTP)

HTTP_Traffic / hour = ( 0.35 x 36000 ) Mbits / hour = 12600 Mbits /hour

Now presuming, the enterprise has off-peak hours and peak-hours of Internet Usage, such that 40% of the day (approximately 9.6 hours) is peak-hours, while 60% of the day is off-peak. Peak hours are the daytime-periods, when we would witness, TOTAL UTILIZATION of our Internet pipe. And if we suppose that the utilization ratio is about 30%, i.e. the load level during non-peak hours is about 25% of peak hours; then we may further estimate, on the basis of above derivation -

HTTP_Traffic / day = ( ( 12600 x 0.4) + ( 12600 x 0.6 x 0.25 ) ) x 24

HTTP_Traffic / day = ( ( 0.4 x 1 ) + ( 0.6 x 0.25 ) ) x 12600 x 24 = 166320 Mbits

This is a rather simplistic looking model. Something more realistic, would require, a proper hourly stepping, that gives a proper distribution pattern over the day.

Now we deal with the toughest, and debatable part!

What would be the ratio of cacheable_content in the HTTP_Traffic?

Based on my experience at various customer premises, I prefer to assume – 30%.

That would mean 166320 x 0.3 = 52617 Mbits of content could be cached per day.

Standard practice is to store content for at least 72 hours (store-age).

That means we would need a storage of at least 49896 Mbits.

So a conventional 8bits = 1byte conversion, tells me, that we need a storage of at least 6237 MBytes

Another interesting picture that should be visible during peak hours is that the HTTP_Traffic when considered as data downloaded by the proxy server, should be less than the data sent to the clients, and the difference would be the caching efficiency. That would signify that the cached content was used to serve the requests made by the clients.

In the overall discussion, we have not considered the performance degradation that would be caused due to factors such as network latencies.

The above methodology however, still doesn’t answer the original question. Because in the original question, the Internet Pipe was not defined. So I was quite skeptical, that such calculation could ever be performed, because it was the number of users (clients) that was defined, rather than my known approach via Internet_Pipe. My arguments and insistence was based on the fact that, the content that can be cached will be an assumable fraction of downloaded HTTP Content. And the maximum content that can be downloaded, will depend on the Internet_Pipe, whether you have one user or a million users. Tushar Dave from Reliance Infocomm, helped me to complete the puzzle with an interesting algorithm, that turned out to be the missing piece of the overall jigsaw puzzle!

Suppose the ISP serves its customers with 256Kbps connections, then for 40,000 users it apparently needs almost 10 Gbps of Internet Pipe.

But actually, that’s generally never true ( in fact, for 40,000 users an ISP would actually commission an Internet Pipe of less than 1 Gbps in most cases! ) . The ISP is never going to receive 1 request from each user concurrently, every moment. This is known as the OFF-time, i.e. the period when a user is viewing the content that has been already fetched. An ISP can safely expect at least 50% of OFF-time.

OFF-time can actually go up to even more than 75% if the ISP is serving more of Home users & small businesses, where the Internet Connection is not shared between multiple users. Secondly most of such user accounts are governed by a bandwidth cap, for example a user can choose for accounts that allow a download of a few Gbs.

In the above derivations we estimated the HTTP_traffic / day from Internet Pipe, now instead we simply need to derive HTTP_traffic / day from expected HTTP_Traffic per month.

So the estimation over-all data throughput can still be derived, without knowing the Internet Pipe! And the above derivation can be still valid!

So let’s see if we can do some calculations now (empirical, of course!)

connections = 40,000

user_connection = 256Kbps

HTTP_Share = 35%

ON_time = 50%

peak_hours = 60%

off_peak_utilisation = 25%

cacheable_content = 35%

store_age = 3 days

PEAK_HTTP_LOAD (in Kbps) = connections x user_connection x HTTP_Share = 3584000

NORMAL_HTTP_LOAD (in Kbps) = PEAK_HTTP_LOAD x ON_time = 1792000

HTTP_Traffic / hour (in Kbits) = NORMAL_HTTP_LOAD x 3600 = 6451200000

Cache_Increment / hour (in Kbits) = cacheable_content x ( HTTP_Traffic / hour ) = 2257920000

Total_Cache_Increment / day = 24 x ( ( 1 – peak_hours x

off_peak_utilisation) + peak_hours ) x ( Cache_Increment / hour ) = 2257920000

Required Storage Capacity ( in Kbits ) = store_age x (Total_Cache_Increment / day) = 6773760000

Required Storage Capacity ( in Mbits ) = 6615000

Required Storage Capacity ( in Gbits ) = 6459.9609375

Considering 8 bits = 1 byte, it looks like we need a little over 800 GB of Storage

However I would Requisition a Storage Capacity that can accommodate for possible increase in downloaded content of 35% (cacheable_content) to sustain at least 3 store_age cycles, i.e. 800 x 1.35^3 = 1968 GB

The above derivation is quite subject to a lot of assumptions. But it should allow deriving by ratio adjustments, quite easily.

For example – if the connections went up by 20% then we would need 20% more storage!

But more importantly, it allows anybody to differ with my assumptions,

and yet approximate the storage required.

Looks so simple now, Thank you Tushar.
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Most Internet service providers (ISP) have made it part of their package to change IP. The Internet Protocol address, or the IP address, of a computer is that computer’s unique address in the online network. And in offering online security and privacy to its customers, the Internet service providers have gone on to use dynamic IPs instead of static IPs.

In your quest to choose an Internet service provider for your home computer or your office connection, you should consider the type of IP address that the service is providing. The recommended one of the two would by the dynamic IPs.

Let us first be familiar with the two types of IP addresses. The first is the static IP, which is assigned to the computer by the network. This address does not change whenever we connect to the Internet. The settings of your computer will remain the same and intact, allowing the computer to connect to the Internet and get data faster.

In contrast to the static IP address, the dynamic IP address is allocated by a router, and it uses DHCP, or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. The DHCP allows for the allocation of an IP address to your computer when you connect to the Internet. It picks up the allocated IP address from a pool of IP addresses available, and every time you connect to the Internet you will have a different IP address. Most Internet service providers use this for their customers. Not all, though, and we have to know what kind of address system the Internet service providers are running on.

As stated above, dynamic IPs are the preferred one of the two. They were made to change and go to another computer user, giving another user that IP address. Your IP will also will be a different one the next time you log onto the Internet. It’s a change “wheel” going on with dynamic IPs, and it is an advantage for us. The change in IP leads to a hack-proof system, as it will give a hacker or any malicious attacker a hard time to get to your data when your address is always changing.

But, of course, static address is also commonly used. Many businesses prefer to run a static IP because of the data that they want to give to the customers they have visiting their website. There’s also the issue of the business employees working in various locations but needing to connect to the company’s data. This would require static IP. Among businesses and companies, the static IP running system is much more in demand.

When we are browsing the Internet on our personal time and our personal computer, though, changing or hiding our IP address is important. Our personal files and accounts may be at risk if we have a real and static IP as our online address. This is not the right precaution if we want to protect our online privacy. For us personal users, it is better to choose an Internet service provider with a system to change IP.


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