The common opinion is that the biggest threats to the data processing systems of companies are represented by damaging software from the Internet. However, according to the Computer im Mittelstand expert magazine, there are many errors committed by employees themselves which endanger the reliability of a company´s electronic network.
Quite often, most of the time due to ignorance, insecure passwords are used. In addition, employees surf on questionable pages or open E-mail attachments, even if they do not know the senders of these attachments.
Particular threats may result from the use of mobile data storage devices: USB sticks, MP3 player or memory cards in digital cameras increasingly present a safety risk, because, on the one hand, via these devices viruses might infiltrate into the company´s electronic network and on the other hand large quantities of data might be secretely stolen from the company. According to an American survey carried out among 400 companies only about one quarter of them has taken technical or organisational precautions in order to protect company data from being abused via such devices.
Also telephony via Internet increases the danger: For example, denial-of-service attacks may be directed against telecommunication devices, or virues and worms be brought in over the voice channel (so-called Spit (Spam over Internet Telephony)). 