Comments on: Web Reputation Can Save You from Online Threats

By: Sarah Martin

Sarah Martin — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 06:35:22 +0000

This article starts a very interesting discussion. A company must be aware of this security aspect because a company’s reputation is its most valuable asset and it is very unfortunate to ruin your reputation because of falling victim to malware. This adds insult to injury.

By: Mr_Coffee_Lover

Mr_Coffee_Lover — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:38:52 +0000

These days it’s so much easier to build and sabotage a reputation. You can use the power of social media to establish a more personal relationship with your existing and potential customers. It’s more practical and real-time.

However, social media can also destroy a business’ web reputation in an instant.

Case Study: Olive Garden

This restaurant has thousands of fans in Facebook. The famous eatery used this tool to upgrade its client relationship. However, its fan page backfired when Olive Garden “accidentally” gave alcoholic drinks to children. The restaurant’s web reputation was damaged in an instant when its Facebook fan page and some online forums were bombarded with complains and angry statements.

By: David Attard

David Attard — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 10:40:57 +0000

@William,
most browsers do implement some kind of malware blocking. However, with some websites, it is not simply a case of black or white. When you have a whole range of scores available at your disposal, you can take more granular decisions.

For example, you can say block High Risk Sites completely, block “Unknown” sites since these are highly likely to be malware or spam, allow tech-savvy users to access websites with a moderate web reputation and allow all users to access trustworthy websites…

@Kevin
there are many features which are used to determine the reputation score of a website, usually there are hundreds of variables which determine the score. Let’s give a few examples:

1. Age of website – thousands of websites a day are created by malware authors to distribute malware – these have a very short lifetime, they are taken offline as soon as security engines find out about them. For the absolutely vast majority of new websites (95%), these are spam or malicious sites. As the age of website increases, its score increases.

2. Location of website – certain geographic regions, web hosting companies, ranges of IPs are known to be “hacker” friendly. Any websites in these regions is given a higher risk rating.

3. Threat History – websites which have been compromised in the past earn negative points. A site which has been compromised probably means a webmaster which is not careful enough, and thus may pose a risk in the future.

These and many other factors are used to give you a rating of not just the current risk a website poses, but most of all the likelihood that a website will host malware in the near future.

This is the real difference with using web reputation for your web security. You will be taking actions to stop websites which can become a threat, before they become a threat. Although the risk may not always manifest itself, why take the risk?

By: William Tomas

William Tomas — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:52:37 +0000

I believe Web Reputation is already a built-in tool for most major search engines such as Yahoo and Google. In the latter, when you search for a certain keyword, it will label websites that are known to have malicious codes and / or infected with malwares.

Firefox also has this feature. The web browser will not load or display the content of websites that are known to infect its visitors with sorts of viruses.

You should protect your business’ online reputation. It’s an investment for the future.

By: Kevin Love

Kevin Love — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:02:10 +0000

Certainly an interesting concept, but how exactly is the data discerned? Is there a group or an organization that monitors and rates these things, or is it simply plugged in whenever a threat is posed? I’d be interested in learning a lot more about how exactly this works.