(MENAFN- ProactiveInvestors)In the world of investment one person's problem is another's opportunity. So it is with the hacking scandal that has hit the reputation and the share price of the internet service provider TalkTalk. That is not to diminish the magnitude of the cyber-attack or the threat it posed to hundreds of thousands of customers whose account details were compromised. It merely reveals the pragmatic way in which the stock market works. So as TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding fought a public relations rear-guard bosses of our major international firms and their chief technical officers will have been taking added precautions to ward off a similar attack. Recognising this the market pushed up the price of shares in a bunch savvy tech firms experts in the dark arts of warding off online attacks. The four singled out here don't possess the panacea (it's doubtful any single company or piece of software has the answer to this growing). But they are able to plug the gaps left by the one-size-fits-all approach of the large consultants. Speaking to experts in the field there are number of challenges faced by large companies that store terabytes of personal information ? but two stand out. One is transactional which merely refers to the amount of business we now all do online which heightens the exposure of banks retailers and government departments to potential attack. 'There has been an unseemly rush online that means security has often been afterthought' said Ashley Stephenson of security software firm Corero Networks. The other threat is behavioural which is the catch-all for how seriously a company and its employees treat the possibility of an all-out assault on its computer systems. Many businesses remain blas?. So for instance a High Street chain of stores that might spend tens of millions annually installing equipment that prevents shoplifting yet pay scant regard to just who can access its data. And as TalkTalk CEO Harding will have quickly realised last weekend and what Gregg Steinhafel the sacked boss of American retailer Target found to his cost last year internet security is now a boardroom issue. And the threat level is rising. 'Large organisations are open to attack' said John Blamire of Falanx Group (LON:FLX) a security firm quoted on the junior AIM market. 'And a lot of tools you require are freely available across the internet.' His company is just the sort of specialist chief executives will call on in the aftermath of the TalkTalk hack. It provides a managed service which means a bunch of techies are responsible for monitoring the security systems of large PLCs. It is the cyber equivalent of having someone sitting at CCTV monitoring for suspicious movements red-flagged by its software. Falanx also provides company executives an independent second opinion that a firm's tech department is following the correct protocols. CEO Blamire also provides an interesting stat ? and that is 60% of all cyber threats come not from the hacker outside the firewall but from villain within. And that presents another set of problems. Few of us these days bat an eyelid sharing our credit and debit details over the phone to pay for anything from flights and hotel rooms to flowers and chocolates. Yet common sense should tell us that sharing confidential information of this type leaves us easy prey to fraud. For the businesses involved in collating this data there is risk of massive fines if details leak into the public arena. Eckoh (LON:ECK) with its CallGuard system and IPPlus (LON:IPP) with PCI-PAL take the human element out of collating this personal information. The technology element here is not the critical piece of intellectual property though it is important. The crucial element is that companies are compliant with payment card industry data security standards. This requires a long arduous box-ticking process; in fact Eckoh reckons it took three years and 10000 man hours to get the sign-off. It means these two companies have a simple high-barrier-to-entry services that solves a significant regulatory and financial headache for large corporates. Finally Corero Networks (LON:CNS) has developed a software platform called The SmartWall Threat Defense System that prevents DDoS attacks where hackers overwhelm their online target with traffic from multiple sources knocking it out. It provides SmartWall direct to internet service providers and hosting companies that sit at the top of the tree and traction for product is growing according to CEO Stephenson. It has been successful in persuading some fairly big firms to become customers. The acid test will be bringing on board a tier-one multi-national service provider. This would provide third party validation of SmartWall as well a significant revenue stream. As Stephenson told me when we met recently: "Ours is a hot area and only getting hotter."
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