Page 355 -
P. 355

354 Part Two  Information Technology Infrastructure


               INTERACTIVE SESSION: TECHNOLOGY


        MWEB BUSINESS: HACKED

        MWEB, launched in 1997, became South Africa’s          •  High-speed antivirus/antispyware software with
        leading ISP in 1998. It has established itself as a      automatic updates
        company that provides a cutting-edge network and       • An enhanced firewall
        service infrastructure and outstanding customer ser-   In addition, MWEB automatically protects custom-
        vice. Currently, MWEB’s customer base of 320,000     ers against junk email and viruses that are sent via
        includes home users; small, medium, and large        email. Its virus filter ensures that only virus-free
        business customers; and corporate clients. MWEB      email is delivered to clients’ inboxes by automatically
        won the ISP of the Year award at the MyBroadband     cleaning e-mails from recognized malware sources.
        Conference in Johannesburg in 2010. The award was    MWEB advises its customers to keep their ADSL
        based on the performance of its various broadband    connections safe from bandwidth theft and account
        services as well as on customer satisfaction.        abuse by blocking unsolicited incoming connections
           Its business division, MWEB Business, was         to network ports commonly used by hackers.
        founded in January 1998. MWEB Business prides          Despite the multitude of security services offered
        itself as being a business partner that is perfectly   by MWEB, a number of MWEB Business subscribers’
        positioned to leverage the power of Web-based        account details were compromised when their logon
        technologies in all areas of an organization. MWEB   and password details were published on the Internet
        Business helps companies:                            by hackers. Initial reports indicated that as many as
           •  Manage business data in ways that add real     2,390 users of MWEB’s business digital subscriber
            value and insight to their operations            lines were affected. The company disclosed the
           •  Integrate existing systems with the Internet so   security breach on October 25, 2010. It appears that
            as to close the gap between technology, strategy,   hackers gained access to the Internet Solutions’ self-
            and the organization’s bottom line               service management system that MWEB Business
           •  Develop, manage, and maintain solutions that   uses to provide and manage business accounts that
            include all aspects of Internet connectivity, Web   have not yet been migrated to the MWEB network.
            site development and hosting, broadband and        Historically, MWEB Business was a reseller of
            wireless applications, e-commerce, and consult-  Internet Solutions’ Uncapped & Fixed IP ADSL
            tancy services                                   services, which were provisioned and managed by
           •  Manage internal information among employees,   MWEB using a Web-based management interface pro-
            as well as among business partners and suppli-   vided by Internet Solutions. All new Business ADSL
            ers                                              services provided after April 2010, as well as the bulk
           MWEB has moved forward in publicizing its plans   of legacy services already migrated, used MWEB’s
        for the South African Internet market. According     internal authentication systems, which were com-
        to MWEB CEO Rudi Jansen, the company needs to        pletely unaffected by this incident.
        improve the quality of their network, which is not     MWEB responded quickly to the hacking inci-
        only an MWEB problem, but also a Telkom network      dent. According to Jansen, about 1,000 clients on the
        problem. Despite having a less-than-ideal network    Internet Solutions network needed to be migrated
        infrastructure, MWEB uses AVG Internet Security to   from the old server which was attacked by hackers.
        offer its customers the best possible security while   Although the network was quickly secured, most
        online. AVG Internet Security offers MWEB custom-    customers had recently been moved to MWEB’s IPC
        ers the following features:                          network. MWEB would also be contacting these cus-
           •  Identity protection for safe banking and shop-  tomers to reset their passwords, as an added security
            ping                                             measure.  Jansen was quick to note that no personal
           • LinkScanner for safe surfing and searching      information was lost and that none of MWEB’s cli-
           •  WebShield for safe social networking, chatting,   ents suffered any losses as their usernames and pass-
            and downloading                                  words had been recreated and changed. He further
           •  Antiphishing and antispam for a safe unclut-   added that MWEB successfully repels 5,000 attacks a
            tered inbox                                      day.









   MIS_13_Ch_08 Global.indd   354                                                                             1/17/2013   3:10:24 PM
   350   351   352   353   354   355   356   357   358   359   360