“Good Security is a Competitive Advantage.”
As CIO for Continent 8, Hai Ng’s focus extends beyond the usual to encompass strategic communications and market intelligence, with a focus on several areas of interest including social networking.
From governments and regimes trying to lock down Internet channels to curtail riots and protests to high- profile security breaches and the birth of "Hack-tivism," 2011 has shaped up to be an exciting year for the Internet and security.
The eGaming sector has always seen more than its share of security threats due to the lure of a big payday. While many in the industry will think of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, database breaches and transactional intercepts when they think of security threats, individuals and groups working to game the games, outmaneuver the marketing incentives and exploiting customer service angles can be just as damaging to the bottomline.
The rise in the use of cyber-attacks as a method of social and political change will also start to affect the security playing field in the eGaming sector as the motivations for attacks will broaden away from money to potentially more philosophical ideals—two words that should bring chills down any security officer's spine.
With this threat not going to go out of fashion, the eGaming sector, and honestly, anyone who is doing business on the Internet, should take a very serious look at security as an integral part of their activities.
Often, the failure of security is because oddly, it gets relegated to an
afterthought rather than being integrated into the business and technical design of an online business.
Security is often seen as a liability, a necessary evil and an insurance policy you need to pay for but hope you never have to use—that is the wrong approach to security.
Security is a business advantage and good security is a marketable competitive advantage. Good security makes customers comfortable with your offerings and, most importantly, leaving their money with you.
But we all realize that "infallible" is a famous last word, so how do we take security outside the realm of liability?
The first step is to integrate security into the business processes and customer service.
Any good security officer worth their pay grade must realize that how a failure is handled, operationally and publicly, is just as important as preventing a failure.
The first gut reaction to a breach is to hide it while trying to fix it. That is often driven by a poor corporate attitude that equates security failure with job security—not good when it comes to security.
Good security must be able to evolve and it will require the correct corporate attitude to drive that development, not just technology. You cannot evolve if
you believe you have a perfect system, so admitting that there may be a problem, is, the first step.
Security team performance should not just be pegged to their ability to maintain a flawless record but how fast they can detect a potential weakness and remove or deflect it, all while minimizing damage.
Security also needs to be continually tested and one of the best ways is to form a competitive environment between the security team and a "white hat" infiltration team.
One important thing to remember is that testing security on a staging server isn't always the same thing as testing on a live server. At the end of the day, you are not trying to protect your staging server, so do not be afraid to test on live servers, the outcome will be a lot worse when a real criminal attacks it.
So if you have not given much thought to security, it should really start keeping you up at night, not because of the money you stand to lose but the money you stand to make when you run the site that customers feel most comfortable giving their money to.
Continent 8 CIO Hai speaks at various conferences on Social Media and Online Security Matters.
DDoS Mitigation Smart, Scalable, Targeted
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