Cybercrime: finding security in Cyberspace; steps for pour business to take to avoid being a target for high-tech criminals.

• Author: Campbell, Melissa
• Position: Statistical Data Included

When it comes to security, experts say you should look at your computer as if it were a grand house sitting in the middle of a very bad neighborhood.

Are the doors and windows locked? Do you have an alarm system? Did you set up a perimeter around the building? What about all those little cubbyholes that let the tiniest vermin in?

A computer hooked up to the Internet and/or to a network has virtual "doors and windows" that, if unprotected, could allow in viruses, worms, hackers or worse. And it could cause a lot of trouble for your business, from downtime to lost files to the loss of whole computers.

Newsweek Magazine quoted Information Week Research as estimating security-related downtime costing U.S. businesses $273 billion last year. Worldwide that figure was roughly $1.39 trillion. Local experts say they have no idea how prevalent the issue is in Alaska. Detective Glen Klinkhart just knows he can't handle all the cases that come to his office.

As part of the two-member computer crime unit at the Anchorage Police Department, Klinkhart works closely with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. Still, he's one of only about a dozen cybercrime investigators in the state, he said. APD's computer crime unit gets about 20 calls a day from law enforcement agencies seeking help, and from citizens reporting computer crime or asking if a crime has been committed.

And when the unit does take a case, the suspect is just as likely living in Florida or Spain than in Alaska, he said.

Klinkhart is noted for helping solve a 1999 case where two San Diego teens targeted Internet Alaska customers. The teens sent e-mails to 400 customers saying there was a billing problem. They requested customers go to a Web page they designed and asked them to enter personal information, including credit card numbers, addresses and Internet account numbers and passwords. Turns out, the teens had sent similar messages to thousands of Internet customers across the nation in similar scams.

And that's just one way people use computers in crimes. Klinkhart said programs are now available that allow people to write computer viruses and to constantly scan the Internet for weaknesses. Once hackers find weaknesses, they can tap into a computer or a network fairly easily. Once they're in, they have full access to personnel files or other important information. They can change things within those files or destroy them--or even the entire hard drive--altogether.

"I hate to...