These are ways to access the top administrative privileges programmed in by a hacker who's made his way deep inside a system. These back doors are then often posted on Web sites or in newsgroups. The biggest threat is the internal threat, not the external threat. The best defense against hackers, in most cases, is to keep the doors shut to them at all times. A small business that doesn't at least have fire walls as protection is a giant target, waiting for any one of millions of people to throw a dart.
Larger businesses can invest more in the protection of their systems, and have more to lose.
In addition to fire walls and password-protection, some businesses have taken the added step of laying traps for hackers. These so-called honeypots fake computer networks within the network hackers are allowed to access. Once the hacker is stuck in the honeypot, the company can go to the police or federal authorities. Calif. California and federal statutes have stiff punishment for the hackers who get caught. Still, there's no penalties yet for posting hacking software, Feldmann says, in part because security experts use the publicly available information to improve their systems.