Policing the information age

Some viruses attack more devastatingly by corrupting data subtly, perhaps altering crucial financial data, which damages a company's ability to trade. A computer virus spreads by making copies of itself, normally without the knowledge of the user, and often contains a malicious 'payload' that can cause irreparable damage to the computer. These 'malware' programs can hide in floppy disks, CDs, images, other computer programs or in contaminated data on the Internet.
In the Telecommunication Age, information has become the most important commodity of all. Access to information has become a goal in itself for a new breed of criminal - hackers and virus pranksters - whose aim is to break into other people's systems. Keeping them out has become one of the fastest growing communications industries of all.

The growth of viruses : muck spreading
There are many high-profile virus programmes that have silently attacked computers undetected, but wiping out all the data on a hard drive isn't all that can happen.
Some viruses attack more devastatingly by corrupting data subtly, perhaps altering crucial financial data, which damages a company's ability to trade. Other viruses can ruin personal or company reputations by posting private documents on open newsgroups.
A computer virus spreads by making copies of itself, normally without the knowledge of the user, and often contains a malicious 'payload' that can cause irreparable damage to the computer.
These 'malware' programs can hide in floppy disks, CDs, images, other computer programs or in contaminated data on the Internet. However, they are often spread by emailing themselves to the addresses they find on a personal email system. Just how devasting a virus attack can be on an email system was highlighted in 1999 when the infamous Melissa virus forced Microsoft and a number of other very large companies to completely turn off their email systems until the 'infection' was removed. Nearly all viruses can be stopped by installing anti-virus software on a PC and keeping it updated at least once a fortnight.

International wire-tapping : who's reading your e-mails?
One of the key concerns holding back the growth of online trading is confidence in how secure financial transactions are. The perceived vulnerability of e-mail and other Internet traffic to eavesdropping raises severe concerns about the security of financial transactions. News stories of blunders that allowed online users to read other people's bank details have caused widespread alarm.
But the worries aren't just with financial data. Electronic eavesdropping (interception of e-mails, tampering with their contents and monitoring of voice calls) is another concern, as is the ability of criminals to block communications, for instance to sabotage alarm systems before burgling a warehouse.
There are reports that governments monitor all forms of electronic communication surreptitiously, not just to combat terrorist threats but also to gain commercial intelligence for their countries. The number of official wiretaps and intercepts carried out by governments is also growing.