Advisories

Keep Your Network Safe from the Beijing Olympics

Advice from Secure Computing

By George Craciun, Security News Editor

8th of July 2008, 11:01 GMT

Adjust text size:

The threats the Olympic Games pose to your organization's network ask for precaution methods

With just 31 days to go until the 2008 Beijing Olympics kick-off, it is important that you make good use of this time and make the necessary preparations so that your organization's network keeps working safely and efficiently. According to Eric Krieger from Secure Computing there are two factors that put your network in jeopardy: first of all, the spam related to the Olympics threatens to infect the network; secondly, the network resources may be stretched to the limit if several employees try to watch live streaming coverage of the Olympics.

You do not need a TV to watch the 2008 Olympics because there will be plenty of web coverage. The Australian Channel 7 for example will be live streaming most of the events. "Networks will be quickly overburdened if multiple employees choose to watch at the same time, resulting in network slowdowns, even application or network failure," says Eric Krieger as cited by CRN.

According to him, an organization that wants to avoid such problems could arrange for a TV with cable reception to be placed in a break room or cafeteria. An alternative would be to enable live streaming on a singular PC; this solution does not slow down the network, as opposed to numerous employees watching live streaming broadcasts at the same time but on different PCs and putting a strain on the bandwidth.

Spam messages relating to the Beijing Olympics also pose a problem for the network. It is perhaps one of the most exploited means used by spammers; disguise your spam message as news regarding a recent event and the user will be interested enough to bite the bullet. The spam will definitely include a link to a site or a video, but by clicking on that link the user will be infected with malware such as beijing.exe.

There is a third way of approaching this issue: the company could install software solutions that monitor network and Internet usage. In this case the company must inform its employees about its policies regarding Internet access in general and live streaming in particular. This way the employees will know that they cannot watch the Olympics from work.

TAGS:

Secure Computing | Beijing Olympics | security software

SEARCH THE NEWS ARCHIVE :

Today's News | Yesterday's News | News Archive

User opinions:

No user comments yet.

Be the first to express your opinion using the form below!

Share your opinion:

SUBMIT PROGRAM \| ADVERTISE \| GET HELP \| SEND US FEEDBACK \| RSS FEEDS \| ENTER NEWS SITE \| ENGLISH BOARD \| ROMANIAN FORUM
© 2001 - 2008 Softpedia. All rights reserved. Softpedia™ and the Softpedia™ logo are registered trademarks of SoftNews NET SRL.	Copyright Information \| Privacy Policy \| Terms of Use \| Update your software \| Archive

NEWS CATEGORIES: