property
Island Life - April/May 2011
Consultancy. There have been similar
machine and you will never know that
It will remain to be seen whether this
cases both in America and Canada
it has happened.
You will be able
is achievable. Whilst legal remedy
where individuals have been found
to use your computer, but they will
is in place via the Computer Misuse
guilty of offences and following
be collecting passwords, credit card
Act 1990 it would appear that there
such convictions have now secured
details and everything. The annual
still is considerable ignorance and
prestigious employment within the
cost of having to regularly review and
complacency. An interesting comment
industry in developing software to
update software to guard against
was made by an expert in America
prevent such hacking. There seems
such intrusion and corruption of the
recently who stated that by seeing
to be a general acceptance that
computer remains a real burden to
hackers as a threat, with ‘no shades of
there remains much ignorance and
many businesses, who simply cannot
grey’ both industry and Government
complacency on the part of software
afford to be without such protection.
diminish network security and turn
developers who appear to have no idea
These additional costs will inevitably
away one of the deepest talent pools
of security, generally coupled with the
be passed on to the consumer as they
available to them. He was in fact
end users (i.e. the consumers), who
so increase. There is a considerable
suggesting that not all conduct is equal
blindly trust every email that arrives
general lack of understanding and
and that a criminal spammer is very
in the ‘inbox’. Such hacking has
awareness within business and I believe
different from a benign intruder who
become so sophisticated that purely an
that Government should encourage
simply breaks the law and that present
attempt to delete such often triggers
further education and training in this
Governments do not seem to grasp this
corruption. As an expert pointed out
area. The Land Registry, being a Civil
fact. For such, we all need to remain
one of the biggest security problems is
Service Department, and in developing
vigilant in respect of the use of our
that machines run every application by
their new ‘matrix system’ (a ‘model’ to
computers on a daily basis and I fear
default and in view of this if anyone on
improve and become involved in the
that this will remain the case for some
the internet can trick your computer
process of land transfer) have had to
considerable time to come.
into running a malicious programme
consider the costs of developing and
even once, they can control your
installing sufficient full proof software.
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