IT security: who needs IT?

• Author: White, Michele
• Position: TELECOM & TECHNOLOGY

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The identity of a client or customer is worth a dollar when a crook steals it on the web--that's what law enforcement officials say.

"A 'FULL' (that is) your name, date of birth, your mom's maiden name, address, all the information you need to open credit in your name, goes on the black market for $0.10 and up to $1," says FBI Special Agent Clark Harshbarger, whose primary duty is computer intrusions.

So, what about a client list, a restaurant's secret recipes, an employee payroll account? Customers' credit card information or patients' records?

In the Information Technology world, these are vital assets to business owners and customers alike that are vulnerable to criminal activity. If an IT person turns off the firewall and forgets to turn it back on, or if a company's employees play games on the Internet at work, a business risks compromising these assets--and the potential headaches that follow are incalculable.

"I think the business owner needs to know that every single piece of media storage device that they have within their business has the capability of holding (assets) and if they don't secure devices or secure how they're used there's going to be a price to pay," says Sgt. Mike Courturier, Anchorage Police Department's Cyber Crimes Unit supervisor. "Their product information is going to go out the door in the wrong hands and that could be a criminal is sue or a civil issue. On either side of that, the possibilities are wide ranging."

APD started the Cyber Crimes Unit in 2003 as an investigative laboratory that is wholly devoted to investigating the use of media and the Internet to commit crimes. While the majority of the crimes the detectives investigate are sex crimes against children and the distribution of child pornography, many of those crimes are committed in the workplace on an employer's computer.

Because of the pervasiveness of criminals using the Internet and electronic media to commit crimes, the lines are blurred between APD's Cyber Crimes Unit and other units in the police department that investigate those crimes.

"As of the last couple of years, nearly every unit at APD has figured out their crime has involved some sort of computer or digital media," says Detective Mark Thomas, Cyber Crimes Unit, "so we assist in the investigation of nearly every homicide, fraud, drug case and robbery."

In fact, cyber crimes are the number three priority for the FBI, after terrorism and counter intelligence...