Security threats from pervasive broadband access Prof. Jim Norton Chartered Director & Chartered Engineer Senior Policy Adviser e-Business & e-Government Institute of Directors Message ‘05 conference Business Design Centre London 27 October 2005

Background to the Survey Policy Unit questionnaire published in June 2004 edition of IoD News and on IoD.com 409 IoD members responded. Small businesses dominated: – 56.7% has up to 9 employees; – 23% had 10 to 49 employees; – 11.5% had 50 to 249 employees; and – 8.1% had more than 250 employees.

Broadband is good for business; Penetration is now high (though members in rural areas not yet reached are increasingly frustrated); Connection “Quality of Service” (QoS) is perceived to be improving; Respondents welcome increased competition; For a small minority there are still significant unmanaged security exposures from ‘always on’ access; and Affordable broadband access is significant facilitator of home working. Key messages

What quantifiable benefits are you seeing in your business use of broadband access? Base: 325 respondents who use broadband for business purposes. 84.3% of respondents cite productivity improvements from broadband access

Better and faster R&D. Better information for decisions Can now do jobs we would not have contemplated four years ago. Couldn’t do business without it. Improved communications with/for outworkers Quick access to worldwide web with huge increase in use at low fixed monthly cost. Many respondents believe that broadband access brings very significant business benefits Transforms way of working. Speed and ability to work anywhere in the World

If your organisation uses broadband and has used the same service for a year or more, which have you seen over time? Base: 325 respondents who use broadband for business purposes. Respondents are not seeing falling service quality as more customers join…

What measures do you take to protect your home (or home office) PC against viruses and other security threats? There are still significant vulnerabilities with 10% of respondents not using a firewall and 23% not regularly installing security updates… Base: 325 respondents who use broadband for business purposes.

As we go beyond eight million affordable broadband access lines in the UK, IoD members (especially those running small companies) are reaping significant and quantifiable business benefits. Those who don’t believe that they can access broadband should look again as new technology extends its reach and BT moves to implement its commitment to 99%+ population coverage. Security remains a key issue. We all have a “duty of care” not to allow our computing facilities to be used to attack others. Simple solutions are available, but not always used… In summary…

The challenge of security compliance? Say 150M broadband access lines worldwide… IoD 2004 Benchmark: 10% without firewall protection… Superhuman effort to drive security adoption (and maintenance) globally up to 99.5% - just 0.5% without… 750,000 broadband attached devices without protection. Time to become infected <1 hour. 750,000 devices in BotNets…. Is this an acceptable situation, given the ever increasing reliance on the Net for mainstream commercial activities?

New models from Grid Computing and ASP? I suggest that processing will move into the network (along the model long highlighted by Sun and Silicon Image) where it can be fully and professionally protected. This will leave very thin clients (screen scrapers) only at the edge on very high speed broadband access, with little if any processing to infect. Software, processing and storage will be available on a pay per use basis - e.g. Application Service Provision (ASP). Recent research in the UK by IoD/Dell suggests that SMEs are now much more willing to consider an ASP model… This model powered by broadband access may greatly benefit small business…

Questions & Answers… Slides downloadable from: