Security in ICT: cost or investment?

Security: cost or investment? What are the main obstacles?
Rules and regulations, national and international, all impose ICT security, binding it tightly to corporate governance. It is therefore in the interests of enterprises themselves to invest to obtain compliance and to do business freely in the market place, but that’s not all. With the growth of collaborative business, security becomes a qualifying factor in network creation with other enterprises and the development of Web 2.0 and e-commerce require security in order to reap new opportunities. As highlighted in the report ICT Security 2008, published by Reportec (www.reportec.it), the strategic and holistic approaches to security are those which enable us to manage the risk and obtain returns, both in financial and image terms, from ICT security.
The obstacles are cultural: the threats exist but the risk for those who don’t invest is isolation.

How have trends and scenarios changed over the last few years?
The greatest changes relate to the attitude of hackers: today they have become true professionals at the service of criminals, to whom they sell advice, services and malicious software. Nobody is safe: company PCs and networks can become zombie and botnet and used, unknown to the owner, in order to carry out fraud and other IT crimes. The only defence is advanced solutions, able to prevent attacks launched even through the most harmless-looking websites, in which real traps are lurking.

Security has become a priority tied to all communication tools; among these, videoconferencing is a niche of ICT in constant growth: how is the theme of security central in this market too?
In general, security enables new products and services, new models of business and innovative processes that constitute an impulse to company development. In this sense it is transversal not just to the various enterprise activities, but to all the main communication tools that today’s companies use, and therefore a central theme also in videoconference communications, where a guarantee of protection and privacy has a dominating role. Let’s think for a minute about the banks, financial or government institutions, and all the networks that a company today enables with its dislocated offices. The buzzword is always security: data and information exchanged must always be protected. Video communication is no exception, on the contrary, it is an innovative and delicate environment, for which today a new software option is available. It is called Aethra Security Mode, developed for the X-line of Aethra products with the aim of increasing the power of security controls and the level of protection of information when a video communication system is being used. This new functionality protects the system from unauthorised accesses and attempts to use the system, through access restrictions, user profiles, recording and tracing of operations carried out. It is a cutting-edge solution and it is pleasing to note that thanks to this, Aethra, an Italian company is the first world vendor to have products certified by the US Ministry of Defence based on the most modern testing programme, the DSN Certification Program, specifically conceived for video communication systems in order to guarantee conformity with the most severe security requirements.