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A team of skilled security experts or
hackers hired to probe a corporate network for weaknesses and
reveal potentially disastrous security holes. Tiger teams resort to a wide
variety of tactics to gain access to computer networks and company
resources, some of a distinctly low-tech nature. Rifling through dustbins
looking for valuable network information, cajoling passwords out of
employees by phone, stealing security badges and breaking into vaulted
server rooms through the roof are all tried and tested techniques.
Nevertheless, their technical exploits are legendary, and some commentators
have noted that were these made public they would be regarded as some of the
most brilliant hacks in the history of computing. Some teams claim 100%
success records, neatly demonstrating in the process that the strongest
firewalls and encryption algorithms are only as tough as the
weakest human or physical links.
tiger teams have existed in the
military and commercial worlds for years, being used to test the integrity
of everything from banks to nuclear laboratories and weapons plants. Their
arrival in the internet world is an inevitable consequence of fears about
the security of e-commerce transactions and privacy of customer
information, as well as a certain paranoia among dotcoms that some of
their less enviable business performance figures might be revealed. |
