The Threats Of Counterfeit Software For An Organization And Users
Counterfeit software is dangerous for all involved, it’s dangerous for the organisation because the fake software is not legitimate and could damage the reputation of the organisation if certain aspects of the software does not work or causes problems to the users systems, this is why its important for organisations to put in place systems to stop counterfeit software such as “Keys” which are strings of unique characters tied to the users account who bought the software, when they put their one time use key in it will only work for that account and thus unlock the software.
Another way to stop counterfeit software is to encrypt crucial files so people can’t access and modify them to sell on, Microsoft does this extremely well with their games they sell on the Microsoft store. All games have encrypted files so no one can access them, although this does have drawbacks as “mods” are impossible to implement by players to extend the playability of the game.
Counterfeit software is also dangerous to users, even though they think they are getting a good deal by purchasing the software at a cheaper price or downloading it for free they are putting them self at risk, a lot of the time counterfeit software or “cracked” software has custom code in it which has a lot of security risks. For example, free Microsoft Windows 10 downloads from torrent sites have been known to have custom code in them and have viruses and spyware implemented in them, also custom adverts. Therefore, it’s important for the user to always use authorised software to eliminate security risks.
A lot of the time these counterfeit software’s distribution websites can be easily taken down by Internet Service Providers so people have started using Peer to Peer networks, this is when multiple people has the software installed on their PC’s and its distributed slowly to others who would like it, this is usually done without the users consent and is hidden away in invisible programs. Another way people distribute counterfeit software in a music physical way is at boot sales or eBay, this usually consists of DVD’s and music on physical media, it’s extremely easy to sell this way as these ways of distribution has very limited security and counterfeit checks.
Technical failure is when the physical hardware fails causing outages of websites and loss of data, technology has become more and more reliable in modern times but sometimes still fails, these failures consist of Hard Drive failures which is the most common, usually an organisation will send the Hard Drive in for data recovery as it holds important customer data. Another technical failure that would affect the sales and income of an organisation is a power cut, a power cut would stop the servers from running bringing the website down. A way to get around a power cut is backup generators, these can usually run the servers for hours at a time until the power is back up.
