Virtue Security Shares Insight on the Growing Interest in Ethical Hacking Services for Small Business Owners
New York, New York (PRWEB) July 18, 2013 -- News this week from the Financial Times Online shed insight on the growing number of small businesses, financial companies, and government organizations becoming victim to theft, extortion, and cyber espionage. In order to educate the public on the value of ethical hacking services, Virtue Security shares industry insight on the trend of small businesses and financial institutions turning to ethical hackers to secure their online assets and identity.
Ethical hacking is a service gaining traction among many small to midsize businesses. Not long ago ethical hacking was a service used mostly by large financial institutions to determine how vulnerable they were to cyber-attacks. Teams of ethical hackers were contracted to perform attacks just a malicious hacker would. The goals were the same; to steal money, obtain sensitive information, and gain access to critical computer systems. However, instead of actually stealing money or company secrets, ethical hackers present their findings to the client so vulnerabilities can be fixed. These exercises became a critical exercise to secure banking applications before being released to the public.
In the last five years the world has seen a tremendous increase in not only the skill level of criminal hackers, but also in how malicious attacks have become. The old “worst case scenario” was that an organization’s data was stolen; this is now becoming only the first stage of an attack. Industry experts are now seeing data theft being used now to leverage extortion plots and much more threatening types of attacks. Many of these attacks come from extremely organized criminal gangs, often in countries where they are rarely found or prosecuted. As global population rises and technical skill advances, we are sure to maintain this increasing trend of attacks.
Criminal hackers often exploit weaknesses in web applications to gain access to sensitive data. Hackers also exploit weaknesses that allow them to force users of applications to unknowingly perform sensitive actions against their will. The range of attacks that small businesses face is often much larger than thought. Because of this, ethical hacking for many businesses is now a critical routine in maintaining proper security.
“While the sophistication of criminal hackers has increased, so have the abilities of ethical hackers,” said Elliott Frantz, the founder of Virtue Security. “We are what people call 'white hat' hackers, who are active in the majority of research in defensive as well as offensive tactics. There’s a lot of new security controls to strengthen the security between web applications and their users. Implementing these controls properly is just one of many recommendations that are typically made during our security assessments”.
“The difference between hackers is that some aim to destroy peoples lives while we stand by a code of honor to keep information we find confidential,” Frantz added.
For more information on ethical hacking services, or to schedule an online evaluation, contact Virtue Security via email at: contact(at)virtuesecurity(dot)com
Virtue Security is an ethical hacking service provider founded to bring ethical hacking to small business. The founding members have conducted ethical hacking exercises for many of the world’s largest financial institutions. More information can be found at http://www.virtuesecurity.com.
Elliott Frantz, Virtue Security, http://www.virtuesecurity.com, 347-826-3330, [email protected]
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