Uniq Systems Ltd

Many years ago I stopped trusting audio cassettes and moved my music collection to CD after noticing that if I left an audio tape on the car dashboard the sound deteriorated. Cassettes also had a habit of getting chewed up and broken in the tape drives resulting in me having to borrow my mum’s nail polish to stick the ends together. Why I used nail polish I don’t know but I am sure I read it somewhere.

I then transferred all my home movies to DVD and also copied them on to a huge hard drive for belts and braces, again because VHS tapes looked and felt so antiquated.

Finally I copy all my digital photos on to a huge hard drive and also put a copy on Microsoft Live Mesh. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Microsoft Live Mesh it is a free Cloud based storage service (Yes I know the word Microsoft and Free are rarely found in the same sentence!). Not only does Live Mesh store your files in the Cloud but it also synchronises the files between all the computers in your “Mesh” i.e. Your XP home computer, your Vista laptop, your Apple iBook etc will have a copy of the same files which are updated automatically if they change.

So the question is, if I am so worried about my music, my home videos and my pictures why do I walk home everyday with a tape in my back pocket with all my company data on it? If I were to loose my music and videos I would be upset and would probably be forced to live the rest of my life in the doghouse, I would still have a job as would people who work with me. On the other hand loosing the company data is just unthinkable! I am pretty sure as a company we wouldn't survive which would effect our suppliers and would also hurt our customers that depend on us for various services. 

Recent research has found that internet users make over 100 Million visits to malicious URLs every month! The problem is a pandemic by any definition of the word.

Web threats are becoming more and more deceiving, to the extent that avoiding "dodgy" websites is no longer enough to protect yourself and your business. Many well known mainstream websites are being infected by cyber criminals keen to take your hard earned money.

Look out for future posts where I will be going through the anatomy of a web threat step by step. In the meantime be careful, don't be a statistic!