Protect yourself from bandwidth theft

Business owners in South Africa are well aware of the devastating effect crime can have on their companies.

While physical threats such as theft of stock or loss of equipment are easier to identify and measures taken to prevent them, fraud can be more difficult to detect. Even more so when it comes to theft of an "unseen" commodity such as bandwidth.

Bandwidth theft is a potential problem for any business with always-on Internet, and users who have fallen victim to this crime can find their data cap being used up by criminals before they have had a chance to use it themselves. This then means they have to purchase additional bandwidth in order to continue accessing e-mail or the Internet.

As Internet service providers, we are aware the scourge of bandwidth theft is increasing and are constantly educating users about how to prevent it. While most big corporates have firewalls which prevent unsolicited access to their Internet connections, small businesses and home users generally don't, and are therefore more vulnerable.

Fortunately, a new service is now available which will help combat bandwidth theft, and which allows users to increase their security even further. Called ADSL Protected Access, the service resides on the SAIX network and works by blocking unsolicited incoming connections on four vulnerable ports on an ADSL router.

These four ports are most often exploited by criminals targeting victims for bandwidth theft. Users are able to choose whether to enable this service or not, but if it is enabled, criminals will find it much harder to gain access and steal bandwidth from these protected routers.

While ADSL Protected Access does not affect normal incoming and outgoing traffic, it will block the most common vulnerable spots on routers that are used by criminals to gain access to users' accounts and thereby steal bandwidth. Protected Access will not affect existing anti-virus programmes, incoming or outgoing e-mails, or the ability to view Web pages. It also won't affect existing proxy settings or VPN connections.

ADSL Protected Access is, however, not suitable for businesses that run a local mail server, a local Web server which receives incoming traffic, who use Remote Admin on their routers or who need to use Telnet regularly. These companies should make sure they have a suitable firewall to protect themselves from possible external threats.

This free, value-added service is not a program, so it doesn't have to be downloaded and installed; it simply needs to be activated in order to take effect. However, it is very important that anyone with an ADSL Internet connection uses a reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware program, and also changes the default settings (including the username and password) on their router.

Together with the Protected Access service, this helps to make an ADSL connection as secure as it can be.