European, Nevada experts on cyber crime share tips

Neighbors battling crime turn on their porch lights to keep the crooks at bay.

The same philosophy works in the cyberneighborhood that networks the world, and a session in Reno on Tuesday might be considered a meeting of the Neighborhood Watch.

Washoe County law enforcement officials, representatives of the FBI and Reno-based computer security practitioner Ira Victor will be joined by Eastern European computer security experts to discuss computer-related crime and its threats to businesses.

The session begins at 6 p.m.

at the Public Safety Center, 5190 Spectrum Blvd.

It's free.

The participation of the Eastern European officials is particularly important,Victor said, because many of the computer-related scams landing on Americans' computer desktops in recent months have originated in Eastern Europe.

In fact, the U.S.

Department of State is sponsoring the visit by officials of Albania and neighboring nations in an effort to open channels of communication between computer security experts across the globe.

"When the good guys get together and talk, the bad guys go away," says Victor."It's like turning on a light on your front porch.

The bad guys want to work somewhere where it's dark."

Organizers of this week's meeting strongly encourage business owners to attend because businesses often are the targets of increasingly sophisticated computer-related crimes originating in Eastern Europe.

In one con, for instance, an e-mail purports to be written by a struggling Eastern European company that seeks the help of a American company in making bank deposits.

Well-meaning American businesspeople agree who wouldn't want to help a entrepreneur in a former Communist country? only to discover that they're actually laundering money from some other Internet scam.

"Businesses can become unwitting co-conspirators," Victor says.

But Eastern Europe doesn't account for all of the sophisticated new varieties of computer crime.

In one recent instance, a disgruntled worker loaded a virus into the network of his employer, a publicly traded company.

The virus was timed to launch in a few weeks.

It launched,word got out, the company's stock took a dip, and the employee pocketed gains he made from shorting the stock.

The best defense? Knowledge.

"Business managers can make decisions about what they can do to mitigate those kinds of risks," Victor says.

This week's session is an outgrowth of regular meetings between representatives of InfraGard, a unit of the FBI,with area law enforcement officials and computer security professionals.

Participants hope they can begin using email and Web connections to exchange information about criminal activity worldwide.

"The bad guys use e-mail and the Web to erase borders,"Victor says."Now the good guys can do the same thing."

Along with InfraGard, the meeting is sponsored by Privacy Technician, Sonicwall and the Northern Nevada International Center.