VietNamNet Bridge – Experts have pointed out the network security in Vietnam has become increasingly problematic because businesses and agencies do not make appropriate investments to protect their websites.

 

The alarming figures

 
Nguyen Viet The, Head of the Informatics Department from the Ministry of Public Security released a lot of figures to show the vulnerability of information in Vietnam at a workshop held several days ago on network security. The domain with suffix “.vn” now ranks the third in the list of the domains facing the risk of being attacked (about 15,000 websites).

 

VietNamNet online newspaper is a typical example. Since November 22, 2010, it has suffered a prolonged and continuous attack which has destroyed the database and archives stored for the last ten years.  

 

A lot of domestic websites have holes that place them at high risk. Meanwhile, the majority of big Vietnamese websites have security holes that put them at risk of being hijacked. The problem is that 90 percent of Vietnamese websites have been built up on ASP.NET technology and use IIS 6.0 service. This is the biggest hole which still has not been remedied.

 

2010 was a year in which 1000 websites suffered attacks because of holes existing both on the websites and on the systems’ servers. The list of websites attacked includes websites belonging to financial institutions, banks, and securities companies, all of which need to be strictly protected.

 

The stressed that the alarm level should be raised since hackers have become more professional and they do not leave many traces. Especially, crimes always target online payment services and organize hacking campaigns when enterprises organize sales promotion programs.

 

Statistics released by security organizations showed that about 60 million computers in Vietnam were infected with viruses. This means that 160,000 computers got infected with viruses a day, an alarming figure. Conficker remains the type of virus which has been spreading most rapidly among personal computers. About 6.5 million of computers were infected with this kind of virus in 2010.

 

According to Dr Phuong Minh Nam, Deputy Head of the Informatics Department under the Ministry of Public Security, Vietnam has fallen into the list of top 10 countries which face the highest risk of information vulnerability. Vietnam is now only behind China, Russia, India and the US in terms of risk level, and users and Internet service providers can be attacked at any time.

 

Awareness is the key

 

The from the Ministry of Public Security believes that Vietnamese businesses and individuals now have a “habit” of using unlicensed software products. Therefore, holes may appear which hackers can exploit to attack. Especially, computer users download software with no clear origins online.

 

According to the ministry, in 2010, though 47 percent of businesses and administrative agencies said they increased the investment on information security (the figure was 37 percent in 2009), the investments prove to be ineffective enough. Two thirds of enterprises said they do not know how to react to computer attacks. More than 50 percent of organizations do not have reaction procedures.

 

Stefan Tanase, a senior expert from Kaspersky, said that the problem in information security is the awareness of enterprises’ and agencies’ staffs about information protection, and the “gatekeeper” is the hole through which hackers attack enterprises.

 

The Prime Minister has issued the national program on information security for the period of 2010-2020. This is the first official document which legalizes the issue.

 

The Ministry of Information and Communication has also released a message about an information security day, calling on individuals, enterprises and organizations to join forces for information security in Vietnam.

 

Tuyet Ngan