Just using anti-virus software doesn’t cut it these days: companies are looking for managed cybersecurity with a powerful network of humans and machines working together. Image above shows Mark Webb-Johnson of Network Box.
FROM A HI-TECH SECURITY OPERATIONS CENTER in Kowloon, a firm called Network Box has quietly risen to a role in which it protects large numbers of organizations around the planet from hackers and virus-spreaders.
This is not a firm selling anti-virus programs. This is hands-on, hi-tech monitoring across the world, using humans and machines. Network Box’s selling point is its live, 24-hours-a-day threat-proofing for organizations, delivered from its Hong Kong HQ and a dozen operation centers around the world.
RED ALERT
In the summer of last year, co-founder Michael Gazeley was monitoring international threats when he spotted a serious problem.
A critical vulnerability had been found in a particular brand of cybersecurity that was being used by huge numbers of groups around the world. “It gave hackers the ability to break into an organization in literally three seconds,” Gazeley said.
The list included more than three thousand organisations in Hong Kong. He noticed that many potential victims ranged from government departments, to law firms, to schools, to medical clinics, and to financial institutions.
“We took the unusual step of trying to contact and warn as many Hong Kong organisations as we could. Out of a sense of civic duty if you will,” he said. Many of these organisations were part of Hong Kong’s critical infrastructure, and bringing them down would impact society as a whole.
But the time they had called six hundred of the organizations, he was gobsmacked at the response – or lack of it. “Literally three said they were pleased we called, thanked us for the information, and said they would update and patch their ‘at risk’ systems right away,” he said.
NEW VIRUSES EVERY MINUTE
People don’t realize how potentially dangerous the threats are. Modern companies now face more than a hundred “intrusion attempts” on their networks every hour, and over a dozen new viruses are released every minute, the research shows.
This means Network Box staff are dealing with about four billion “security events” every week—electronic interactions which need to managed safely, said the firm’s other co-founder, Mark Webb-Johnson.
Fortunately, the system works—and the company celebrated its 25th anniversary with a gathering of happy clients at the ballroom of The Mira, a hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, this week.
The firm took the opportunity to announce the latest major upgrade of their system. Network Box doesn’t just protect servers in a company’s headquarters, but also the data on individual staff members’ laptops and tablets.
POLITICAL CHALLENGES
Network Box was started by two Hong Kong friends, Michael Gazeley and Mark Webb-Johnson, a quarter of a century ago—a Kirk and Spock duo, with the former as pioneering front man, and the latter as the cool tech genius behind the scenes. They were both born in Hong Kong, but became friends at university in the UK.
Returning to Hong Kong, they started working together in tech ventures, and found that cybersecurity was an area in which they could excel.
But it is also an area in which the challenges change every day. “When we started, there was no spam even,” said Webb-Johnson. “And AI is the next challenge, but nobody knows exactly how that is going to play out. Any company like ours has to be flexible, because we literally don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
Western politics has also become a challenge, with the lazy assumption by US legislators that every product or service even remotely associated with China is a “national security threat”. And, like most people in Hong Kong, they find the dystopian picture the western media paints of their home city absurd and frustrating. But they have to set it aside and got on with their work: which still has a long way to go, even in Hong Kong.
HK GOVERNMENT SLOW TO REFORM
While Network Box’s services are now being used by a number of government departments, NGOs, and police divisions in Hong Kong, the majority of government and private organizations in the city are still using US equipment, despite the undisguised hostility from that part of the world. This worries Gazeley.
There’s no need to take such risks, he says. “With ever-increasing regularity, we see some CEO of a major corporation, or head of some major government department, apologising on the news, saying they take cyber security, and the data privacy, extremely seriously,” he says. “The truth is: no, they don’t.”
Images by Network Box.