How to make software more secure against new threats?

Technology is developing into leaps and bounds everyday and in the last few years it has grown at such a rapid rate that now almost every system existing in mankind is driven by some software custom written for that particular system. From buying a simple movie ticket to doing money transfer, every process has become completely automated and can be processed just by using a few mouse clicks and a few keyboard entries. Online business has become the "in thing" and will be here to stay for long, long time to come. Online transactions are easier to do, faster to process, and comfortable to enjoy...but riskier also. Whenever a genuine software is developed for a particular process, a malicious software is also developed by some evil brains to take advantages of any loopholes that software might have left. There are so many phishing websites, rootkits, Trojans, Spywares, Adwares on Internet that the anti-virus keeps updating every seconds and still these viruses keep coming in. The anti-virus software tries their best to eliminate or even quarantine these malicious codes from infecting one's computer but more often than not these viruses are able to defeat the anti-virus security system by taking advantages of the loopholes that generally is found in almost every software we use.

So, why these loopholes are left in the software? Well, it's not the fault of the software developer. In fact, right from the conceptualization of a particular software, a dedicated team starts working on the security aspect of the software. This team keeps tracks of any corruption that might have taken place during the development phase. The software testers do their best to test the software's resistance power against unknown enemies and give their best suggestions to the development team to fill up any loopholes they found during testing phase. Now, when the software is finally implemented after successfully going through all security checkpoints, frequent security patches are needed to be installed frequently to counter the threat against new and more advanced malicious codes.

The best way to achieve the highest level of online security is to be prepared for the worst imagined scenario only at the time of the conceptualization of the software. The software should have gone through every possible security checks and then the software should also be programmed to auto-correct itself in case of this being infected by some viruses. The saying "offence is the best defence" should be implemented as an essential rule for development of a software, so that the software should be able to self-defend itself in times of attacks.

Thus, online security can only be made more secure by taking care of all security measures during the conceptualization, development, testing, implementation, and after sales phases of the software installation and regular security patches should be applied periodically so that the software is able to defend against new virus definitions that keeps evolving every single hour. Online transactions can be more fun if one feels more safe while trading online and thus more and more people will start using this comfortable business tool.

© 2009 Ranjan Kumar

After Bing, now Google services blocked in China

Just on my last post about ongoing Bing Vs Google battle, I had mentioned about a few services of Bing being banned in China and some Muslim countries and now China has banned a part of Google search services and ordering Google China to clear up some of the lewd contents before allowing it to function fully. China has world's largest population of Internet users and when it suspends the Internet giant to fully operate itself in China, it does come back as a setback for Google, already under intense pressure after the launch of Bing. In fact, Google, Inc., has taken very swift action in this regard and have issued a statement stating that it is working very hard to block all sorts of pornographic contents from reaching users through Google China. The crackdown has come from Chinese authority on Google after its failure to successfully implement filtering services for its search services to filter out all pornographic contents from reaching user, which Bing so effectively does. In fact, Google has also been asked to suspend searches for certain keywords that result in opening lewd contents on the browser. This is the third time in a year that Chinese authorities have warned Google to act upon its filtering services and I think it's time that Google pulls up its socks or it might lose the world's largest Internet population in coming days that might just start the greatest fall of the giant of Internet which it has so ruthlessly ruled for over a decade.

But this move by China comes as a surprise to many. Talking about Internet ethics from Chinese authorities is too big a pill to swallow. In fact, if one researches deep into the origin of Internet hacking, spamware, spyware, and all sorts of malicious viruses, he finds that most of these malicious worms originate from a Chinese IPs and the entire world has been battling hard to counter these Chinese menaces and now China is talking about Internet ethics...wat say guys. Well, Google must improve its filtering services to give us more decent search results but can we expect Chinese Internet watchdogs to take action against those virus originators also which crashes down more than a million PCs everyday across the globe. Let's hope so...

© 2009 Ranjan Kumar