Better safe than sorry: avoiding the lures of piracy

In today’s fast-moving world though, we may well need to brush up that mechanism in order to keep up with all the dangers that do not reside only in the offline world anymore.

Crimes have, of course, made their way to the cyber world. And with the Internet, border lines mean nothing to cyber criminals. Each year, cyber crimes take a personal and financial toll on millions of consumers and cause enormous damage to businesses, governments and economies across the world.

In Thailand, the use of pirated software is rampant and malware remains a major threat to IT security. From major banking institutions to small SMEs, online threats are everywhere. We have seen over and over again that there will always be those groups of people who are constantly looking to take advantage of security holes to gain unauthorised access to networks. And the easiest way for them to get through is pirated software.

This year we have worked with the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the IDC to investigate the malware infection rate of PCs that run pirated software across the globe. Sixty-one per cent of the PCs that run pirated software were found to be infected with malware. However, for Thailand the percentage is a worrying 84. What this means is that malware and IT security threats are actually closer than you may think.

The Electronic Transactions Development Agency or ETDA has recently also conducted research which reported that Thai people spend 50.4 hours per week online. Imagine, if you are spending that much time online through vulnerable devices, what kind of information are you putting at risk?

This is not a problem that can be fixed by just one small unit in society. Cooperation from various partners is needed, and to be honest, even that cannot guarantee we will be unaffected. Still, no one should ever sit back, relax and see their data and money, or even worse, their business going down the drain without doing anything.

In the cloud era, trust is more important than ever. Today, Microsoft supports more than 200 online and cloud services, a billion customers, and 20 million businesses in more than 76 markets worldwide. Those customers need to know that Microsoft will help protect their data. We know that organisations will use only technology that they trust.

At Microsoft, we take the security and privacy of our customer data very seriously. This focus has been ingrained into our culture for more than a decade and is a part of our company DNA.

In June 2013, we worked with financial services industry leaders, other industry partners, and law enforcement to disrupt a global cybercrime operation responsible for over half a billion US dollars in financial fraud. And cooperation with others in related industries continues today.

In November 2013, Microsoft established the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), an international legal and technical team working with partners to help create a safe digital world. Our team comprises more than 100 lawyers, investigators, and forensic analysts around the globe, with expertise across the areas of malware, botnets, IP crimes, and technology-facilitated child exploitation.

As a user, what do you do? As IT threats are moving forward, so should you. Take more precaution in every step you make online. Guard yourself from malware by not letting piracy lure you with that too good-to-be-true price because it is. Cybercrime is something you might not see on TV often as it tends to go under the radar, but don’t wait until you experience it yourself. It will be too late.

 

Somsak Mukdavannakorn is public sector director at Microsoft (Thailand).