Federation targets firm for piracy

Federation Against Software Theft alleges piracy was going on under senior management's nose

The Federation Against Software Theft has targeted a company in the UK, which is allegedly performing illegal sharing of software over peer-to-peer networks.

The company, which cannot be named for legal reasons, was contacted directly by The Federation and initially denied any illegal activity was taking place on its network. It claimed that it had in place a ‘lock-down’ policy on the entire corporate network, denying users the ability to install software or share files.

However, once The Federation began an investigation it emerged that employees and contractors not only had access to ports on the network, but employees – both full time and external contractors – even had access to USBs.

Furthermore, the company claimed it was running an active software audit tool but this did not give it the security it required to monitor the entire network and its ports.

John Lovelock, director general at The Federation, said: “We want to make an example of perpetrators to stop them from stealing and passing on the intellectual property of our members for good. Users can be found at any time during activities of this nature and we will continue to monitor and search for our member products being illegally shared. This is not a one-off-wonder.

“Lock downs are only as good as the security parameters firms set in the first place. With open access to ports across the network and the constant use of USB sticks anyone and anything can be using your network. The managers had taken what they felt were all the right actions giving it a false sense of security, but in fact things were going on under their noses believing they had in place all the security they needed. They did not and as a result found themselves exposed and they are now working with us to fix this gap in their defences,” added Lovelock.

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