I am going to write a series of stories on security over the next week. This has been prompted by a number of articles I have read lately, coupled with the fact that I have had speaking clients mention the topic as being hot again. I think it is really important for all executives to have at least some working knowledge of computer security and the ebb and flow of what the bad guys are doing. Regardless of the industry you are in computer security can impact you either because you could be at risk of losing data that could get you sued, or you could lose your ability to use your own technology. Security problems are a bit like car accidents – you always hope they happen to someone else, and every once in a while, it is you that gets hit.

One interesting article I read was an announcement by Intel that they had developed an improved method to guard laptops from being zombied by malicious code. If you do not know what means, it is simply that you somehow let a piece of code onto your machine so that it can then be controlled by a hacker at will. Normally your now zombied system will be used to deliver spam to the rest of us. I saw a statistic the other day that said that it is possible that up to 40% of home computers have some type of zombie code on them. Of course, you rarely would know it is there because the only tell tale sign is that your performance gets slow at times. The embarrassing thing is when you get a call or email from your Internet Service Provider telling you that they are terminating access until you get your computer cleaned.

Anyway, the article about what Intel has developed described a usage monitoring system that forms an algorithm based on your normal usage patterns so that when something out of the norm starts to happen, like your system generates and sends 100,000 emails on Saturday, their security could alert you to the problem. The concept is sound and if you do not mind the fact that the computer is modeling your behavior, including what sites you go to and when you use your computer and for how long, the improvement is a step in the right direction.

I suppose the only problem is that Intel would have to build this into the BIOS of the computer so that the normal Joe user would not have to take any action. It would just have to be an automatic feature that takes no maintenance. Why do I say this? Well the reason people get zombied in the first place is because they do not practice safe computing so expecting them to load the next generation of pattern recognition security software is very unlikely…

Scott