Dahlberg claims that while system administrators can monitor against outside intruders, they frequently miss an unsuspecting piece of equipment that s unofficially attached to the network. It s like locking all your doors but leaving the windows wide open. Employee behavior does not have to be malicious to be dangerous, he cautioned.
Administrators are only too aware of the multiple dangers lurking on the Net.
Damage from a malicious hack can be both crippling, and expensive worse still, it always comes when least expected. It s not that all hackers are bad, continues Dahlberg. Of the myriad hackers out there one or two percent are hacking with criminal intent. By attaching unauthorized equipment, like modems, to office PC s, employees can unsuspectingly attract the attention of hackers who are utilizing slow-scans to randomly monitor networks. Pieces of equipment that aren t officially part of the network form a hole in the network s integrity and recreational hackers easily detect these through idle scans and utilize them in launching a malicious attack.