Security solutions provider to independent media

VirtualRoad.org – Security Solutions Provider to Independent Media, Human Rights Organizations and Investigative Journalists

journalismVirtualRoad.org is a specialized Security Solutions provider, that during the past seven years has been protecting hundreds of human rights organizations and independent media outlets against digital attacks. Apart from hosting and protecting online content, we assist targeted organizations and individuals with forensic analysis of attack data in order to trace down the attacker, and the individuals and organizations that are providing the th etechnical infrastructure used to launch the attacks.

Today, VirtualRoad.org is working with organizations from more than 20 countries, and hosts large independent media agencies from countries like Nigeria, Azerbaijan and Burma.VirtualRoad.org is proud to have gained the trust from many renowned and significant human rights organizations. VirtualRoad.org is a project of Qurium Media Foundation, a Swedish registered foundation.

The Challenge

Independent media, investigative journalists, activists and human rights defenders are often targets of digital attacks due to the work they do. These groups are often over-worked,under-staffed, badly paid and lack in-house technical skills. Their websites, email accounts and digital communication tools are deployed with no security in mind. Websites are badly maintained and hosted with cheap and non-secure hosting providers. Email accounts are hacked and communication tools are chosen based on convenience rather than security. Asa result, these organizations and their collaborators are easy targets for digital attacks, and are frequently compromised or brought down by cyber attacks.Commercial security solutions exists, but they are neither affordable for these groups, nor customized for their difficult working environments.

Our solution

VirtualRoad.org offers a holistic security solution that covers many different aspects. W eown and control all our technical infrastructure, and all work is performed by skilled in-house staff members. Our organization and the services we provide are designed with security in mind from Day 1, and we apply a flexible business model depending on our clients’ economical situations. Finally, we are driven by a strong personal motivation and have gained trust and good reputation from the freedom online community over the past years.

Our Scope

Our guiding principles comprise three pillars: protecting the content, protecting the people and identifying the attackers.

•Protect the content: we protect the content by auditing the websites, performing pen-tests and building customized tools to monitor and mitigate all types of cyber attacks that might threat the integrity and accessibility of the content.

•Protect the people: we protect the people that access the information we host by enforcing encryption on all services, offering virtual private networks (VPN) and supporting access to our content via the Tor network.  We enforce secure communication of sensitive data with our partners and encouraged the use of email encryption.

•Attribute the attacks: for relevant targeted attacks, we have invested the necessary time and and built new tools to identify the source of the attacks. This is a work that is both tedious and uncertain in its outcome. Thanks to our effort, dozens of cases have been documented thanks to the forensic reports shared with our partners freely.

Our goal for 2017 and beyond is to intensify our work in the attribution of attacks. We believe that by providing verifiable information about those that develop, host, benefit or pay for cyber attacks, is the only way to make a breakthrough in this field. Furthermore,we will keep collaborating with partners that have the capacity to campaign and to influence decision makers.

Rapid Response Service

VirtualRoad.org offers a free-of-charge Rapid Response Service to independent media,investigative journalists, activists, and human rights defenders that are under digital attack.

Our Rapid Response service focuses on

1.Unreachable websites – websites that are timing-out, not loading, or are being blocked by a certain operator or country

2.Compromised websites – websites that have been compromised (infected by malware, back-doored, defaced etc.)

3.Malicious websites – websites that suddenly load slowly, are flagged as Compromised by common browsers, show database errors, or fail to authenticate users

4.Special events – websites that are likely to come under attack due to an upcoming event, such as elections, political campaigns or demonstrations.

Contact information

Information:  info@virtualroad.org

Rapid Response service: rr@virtualroad.org

Source: VirtualRoad.org

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