world. Russian hacker, Vladimiv Levin, was charged with fraud and convicted by a federal grand jury in New York. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison and ordered to pay $240,000 restitution to Citibank. In February 2000 it was reported that hacker attacks on sites such as Yahoo and Ebay resulted in losses of 1.2 billion dollars. The attacks were initiated by hackers who penetrated insecure servers hosted by large organizations like universities and research institutions. These sites were plagued by “denial of service” attacks. (routers connecting the site to the rest of the Internet have been flooded with so much fake traffic that the router becomes unable to cope. Once this is achieved, genuine users find themselves unable to get connected). Other sites affected by “denial of service” include CNN, Zdnet, Buy.com, and ETRADE group. These sites experienced slowdowns in service of 45 minutes up to 5 hours. With the never-ending threat to computer security, there are several different programs available to help guard your valuable information. The following is an overview of some of these programs:SilentRunnerTM. SilentRunnerTM is an internal network security tool and is designed to detect and report network threats that originate from inside your network. SilentRunnerTM is a passive, multi-functional software tool that monitors network activity in real time, producing a virtual picture of network usage and vulnerabilities. Because SilentRunnerTM is passive and does not introduce additional traffic on a network, it remains undetected by network users, without violating a company’s privacy codes. It works as a complement to external devices, such as firewalls and intrusion detection, and provides the highest level of internal security available in the industry. Omniguard/ITA (Intruder Alert). Omniguard/ITA is a real time, security event monitor that enables security manages to detect suspicious...
