Ryan McElrath, Americaneagle.com CTO, Interviewed on WLS 890 AM about Cyber Security
Park Ridge, IL, May 29, 2012 – Americaneagle.com, a leading website design, development and hosting company, today announced that WLS 890 AM’s "The Roe and Roeper Show" reached out to Americaneagle.com last week to interview Ryan McElrath, Chief Technical Officer of the company, on various cyber security issues.
In light of the recent attacks on the websites of the City of Chicago, the Chicago Police Department, and the Department of Justice, respectively, Ryan joined the show as an online security expert and explained the different types of attacks used in these and other instances.
Ryan explained that the type of attack that took down the City’s site as well as the Chicago Police Department site is what’s called a "Distributed Denial of Service" (DDoS). McElrath explained that the goal of these types of attacks is to make the sites unreachable. The second type is referred to as a "Web Application Attack" and was used to target and recently take down the Department of Justice site. In this attack, Ryan explained, vulnerabilities in the server configuration or programming code are used to extract information. Another technique used by the hackers is to simply call the company or organization and attempt to extract information about the website by masking their true identity and pretending to be an employee or someone that can be trusted.
Roeper asked Ryan how Americaneagle.com, host of thousands of websites, maintains a secure environment for its customers. Ryan said, "We have a variety of tools, one is called intrusion detection and it looks for suspicious activity. We also have constant monitoring that alerts us to different things."
Ryan told Roe and Roeper that cyber security issues accelerate every year. "The FBI, CIA, Nasdaq, and MasterCard websites all have been taken down in the last year."
Listen to the full interview here:
About Americaneagle.com, Inc.
Americaneagle.com, Inc., founded in 1978, is a leading Web design, development, and hosting company based in Park Ridge, Illinois. Currently, Americaneagle.com employs approximately 200 professionals in offices throughout the country including Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Washington D.C., New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. Some of their 5,000+ clients include Hobby Lobby, New York Giants, NASCAR, Stuart Weitzman, Garrett Popcorn, Chicago Bears, Abbott Laboratories, and the U.S. Army. For additional information about Americaneagle.com, visit www.americaneagle.com.