Information Leakage: Protect Against 'Google Hacking'

Protecting data has always been one of the Prime Directives of information security. By definition, the term "information security" implies that you are securing the information. Letting that information fall into unauthorized or malicious hands is a major violation of the trust granted to information security professionals.

In most cases, there are firewalls, and intrusion detection/protection systems (IDS / IPS), and other security measures in place to make sure that data is protected. Password policies and security procedures exist to make sure that only authorized individuals have access to confidential or sensitive files and data.

Amazingly though, there is a great deal of information that slips through the cracks. Johnny Long, founder of the web site http://johnny.ihackstuff.com and lead author of Google Hacking for Penetration Testers, has detailed extensively just how easy it is to find ostensibly private or classified information via the Web using everyday search engines available to anyone, such as Google or Yahoo!.

The series of articles below explains the problem of information leakage via the Web and provides some tools and techniques you can use to determine if any of your data is at risk of compromise via the Web. It also provides you with some steps you can take to remove your data from Web search engines to fix the problem.

• Impact of Information Leakage
• Web Servers As The Weak Link
• Preventing Information Leakage Through The Web
• Performing Web Data Leakage Risk Assessment
• Stopping Data Leakage