Security is sacrificed on the altar of competition

Long one are the days when IT security professionals only had hackers to worry about. Over the past few years the ranks of online troublemakers have grown to include organised criminals, professional spammers and scammers, cyber-terrorists and politically motivated “hacktivists”.

On the technology front, traditional defensive measures are coming under increasing strain from threats of ever-growing complexity and sophistication. Attacks can target everything from the operating system to individual applications, software components and drivers.

So why, given how the cards seem to be increasingly stacked against the forces of IT security, are government bodies helping online miscreants with their mission to circumvent security?

After a 10 years of dancing around the legal maypole, the EU finally won its battle with Microsoft over the perceived dominance of the software giant’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser. Now when consumers buy a new PC or laptop, they will be able to choose which browser they wish to use with their Windows operating system. Unfortunately, what may seem like a victory for consumer choice is also a golden opportunity for online criminals.

Users are now spoilt for choice when it comes to browsers. However, each offering, be it Opera or Google Chrome, for example, presents its own security challenges, and to make matters worse many PC users remain blissfully ignorant of the need to keep their browser software healthy, secure and updated.

Take Google Chrome – in its first incarnation it was totally insecure, and anyone who installed it was consequently a soft target for hackers.

For any hacker, or person with criminal intent, this EU victory over Microsoft has come as a welcome boost to their nefarious activities.

So, dear reader, choose whatever browser you wish, but consider the security implications, and ensure its defences are kept up to date – especially if your choice means Microsoft can no longer be relied on to facilitate this as part of its on-board update service.

John Walker is a BCS contributor