BAD NAUHEIM (pm). Precisely because the Internet is such a fast and actually simple medium, it opens up many possibilities for fraudsters and crooks. On Tuesday evening, around 25 local entrepreneurs experienced this during a lecture at the Zulegers restaurant in Bad Nauheim. Movetech, the domestic IT system consultancy was invited to it.

Steffen Mauer and Gordon Kirstein took the visitors into the world of hackers and clearly demonstrated how easy it can sometimes be to deliberately mislead people. This is especially the case with so-called phishing attacks. A harmless-looking email prompts you connect to what appears to be a known page. “But in the address line, which is completely in lower case, there is a big “i” that turns into a small “L” when reading it — or the other way around,” warned Movetech managing director Kirstein. “If you click on it, you will end up on a very well-built page where you pick up additional risks for your own IT system.”

“Hacking for decision-makers” — that is the title of the lecture — should first and foremost make entrepreneurs aware of the risk of how easily an attack on data networks can begin. “If hackers are deliberately targeting your company, any information they receive about phishing attacks is part of the key,” Mauer explained clearly. The 35 year old needs to know: Mauer checks the networks of Movetech clients for their security, by trying to crack them. “This is exactly how we find weak points, to which companies should then respond with their own resources or external help.”

“Unfortunately, in many companies, the IT security is only partially seen as an independent area. Usually, the internal IT department has to take care of it.” For Kirstein, who founded Movetech in Gießen more than 20 years ago and has been operating from Bad Nauheim for ten years, this is a mistake: “It is important for the IT department that the systems work smoothly. IT security has to check this and accordingly try to find out whether and how it can be prevented from functioning properly.” The 47-year-old shakes his head: “You can’t reproduce that in a department because the internal objectives cannot be reconciled.”

The event was a collaboration with the German Federal Association of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (BVMW), for which the district association chairman Malu Schäfer spoke a greeting word, and was supported by the computer manufacturer HP. Initiator Gordon Kirstein is very satisfied with the positive response: “The topic is too important to be overlooked.” Together with the partners, the lecture “Hacking for Decision Makers” should form the beginning of a series of lectures. “I assume that we will offer two more events on this topic this year.”