Halting Hackers
WEB PERVERTS are the biggest threat to the integrity of e-commerce sites – indeed any Web site – according to the people at Sanctum Inc. in Santa Clara, CA.
Sanctum is an 18-month-old company that specializes in Web site security. “Web pervert” is Sanctum’s term for a hacker.
“There are four types of Web perversion,” explains Aubrey Balkind, chief executive officer of Frankfurt Balkind, Sanctum’s agency of record. “Stealing assets; altering prices or other transaction details; stealing customer information, such as records or credit card numbers; and defacing – putting something on the site that’s not supposed to be there.”
Industry estimates put vulnerability near 90%. Sanctum claims most hacking incidents aren’t reported.
Sanctum offers two different kinds of software to hacker-proof an e-commerce site. Yahoo!, which was shut down by hackers earlier this year, is among Sanctum’s clients.
While firewalls and antivirus encryption help, they address only part of the problem.
To combat all four hacker levels, Sanctum offers AppScan and AppShield. AppScan searches a Web site for possible vulnerable points. AppShield sits on a site and reportedly stops any attempt at hacking.
“The [software] doesn’t care what the hacker tries. It will stop any attempt to change anything that wasn’t intended,” says Diane Fraiman, Sanctum’s marketing director.
The software, it seems, was developed to monitor behavior independent of the source of the “misbehavior.”
That brought Sanctum to New York-based Frankfurt Balkind to develop a campaign for its products. To market Sanctum, the agency created what it calls a new category: Web perversion.
The direct mail campaign targets healthcare, financial services and government departments.
The brochure, Balkind explains, comes in a plastic sleeve with URLs printed on it. As you pull the inside out, there is a scanning effect of codes on codes. At some point a hole drilled in the sleeve lines up with a hole drilled in the contents, which Balkind hopes will be an effective metaphor for Web perversion. “We’re trying to jolt senior managers about security,” he says.
An ad campaign with the tag line “Save Your Site” will roll out later in the year. The tag and the graphics are already being used on the Web site (www.sanctuminc.com).
