Home » Data Protection » Network Security

5 Ways Google Is Shaking the Security World

Whether you're charged with preventing hacks, protecting assets, stopping fraud or defending trademarks, Google and other search engines present a new mix of risks for everybody in the security game.

"Usually the engines will catch the obvious fraud, and they won't even bill you for it," Lee continues. But if you have a larger problem, you may need to gather information about why you believe some of the clicks are fraudulent and ask the company hosting the ads for a refund. Ghosmajumder says Google devotes significant resources to a team of investigators who proactively monitor for fraud and also do research about possible fraud reported by advertisers. Google also has engineers working on technical means to identify invalid clicks. According to the Sempo survey, 78 percent of advertisers that have been victims of click fraud have received credit from a paid search provider, and 40 percent of the time it was based on their request.

The question, of course, is whether to bother making a request. Who better than the CSO to help the advertising department figure out whether it would cost more for the company to tamp down on the problem or simply to pay for the fraud?

Shock waves: 2 (moderate). For companies using pay-per-click, this is one to watch. Click fraud has the potential to dramatically reduce the effectiveness of online advertising. But with more than 90 percent of Google's revenue coming from advertising, the company has a serious incentive to keep the problem in check so that advertisers don't lose faith in the pay-per-click model.

5. Google Desktop

What it is: A free tool offered by Google that allows users to quickly search the contents of their hard drives. (Similar tools are offered by MSN, Yahoo and others.) The latest version can also be used to share files between computers.

How it works: After the user downloads the tool, it works in the background to index everything on his hard drive, much like Google indexes the Web. All fixed drives are indexed by default, but the user can specify folders to exclude or extra drives to add. The software can be set to return results on text files, spreadsheets, PDFs, Web history, e-mail and more. Once the indexing is done, when the user runs a Google search, items from his own computer appear at the top of the results. Alternately, he can use the tool by itself by opening it on his desktop; he doesn't even need to be connected to the Web.

A new version also has a controversial feature that allows a user to share files between computers. With this setting enabled, Google indexes the files on one computer, pulls them up on its servers, then pushes them down onto another computer (which is similarly configured with the software). Then, a search done on one computer returns results from both.