BP Declares War On The Lan

Energy group BP has shifted thousands of its employees off its LAN in an attempt to repel organised cybercriminals. Rather than rely on a strong network perimeter to secure its systems, BP has decided that these laptops have to be capable of coping with the worst that malicious hackers can throw at it, without relying on a network firewall. Ken Douglas, technology director of BP, told the UK Technology Innovation & Growth Forum in London on Monday that 18,000 of BP's 85,000 laptops now connect straight to the Internet even when they're in the office. "Hackers and virus writers have been a problem for years. But today there are very well-organised gangs in Russia, China and Brazil, with large teams and large server farms, that are determined to get their hands on our internal data and our users' identities," said Douglas.

Source - ZDNet UK