Earning trust online is a daunting task for any business; its importance can not be stressed upon enough because in the past some reputable web properties have been responsible for infecting visitors with malware.

On Wednesday during “Protecting Your Cloud: Security, Trust, and Opportunities” presentation, Fran Rosch the senior vice president, trust services of VeriSign highlighted numerous procedures for companies to construct trust for their hosting services. The major difficulty for companies is that when harmful code is downloaded by a client PC. It was admitted by Rosch that there are few obstacles which have made providing security more difficult. He named third party ad networks, recent sharp rise of social networking websites and fake antivirus software as the main causes.

Most antivirus software warn the user by a pop up screen altering them that something hazardous for the PC has been spotted and they should download a free of charge or paid third party application to deal with the malicious code. Truth is revealed when the downloaded third party application comes equipped with hidden malwares, or tries to persuade the sometimes naïve users to purchase more software to remedy the situation.

Rosch pointed out that “in most cases it is difficult to pinpoint and uninstall these nasty malwares; the only choice the user is left with is to format the hard disk and reinstall the operating system”. It is also difficult to bear in mind that unethical and malicious hackers utilize new innovations including social media. They are perfectly aware of the fact that people tend to act less cautiously when they are visiting social websites like Facebook. For example, one trick was to display an animated puppy which appeared harmless and cute but when clicked upon downloaded a malware. The user would than be prompted to share this with his friends on the network which he or she would do, unknowingly mass distributing the malware because they thought it was just passing on and sharing something cute and funny.

Trusting blindly is a major issue. “People exhibit blind faith and trust at some websites,” Rosch declared. Most of us are under the assumption that reputable websites of multi billion dollar companies like CNN or New York Times are safe and free of malwares and other malicious codes, but such is not always the case. Even these carefully hosted sites have been tricked by third party ad network which lead the user to malware. For example, The New York Times had to seriously overhaul and reinvent its advertising strategy when people posing to be from famous voice over internet or Voip Company Vonage purchased advertisement space and began publishing ads that appeared to be from Vonage but redirected the users to malware.

VeriSign comes into the picture with a solution to this otherwise cumbersome problem by providing website, the technical expertise that would not only act as barriers against such menaces but also incorporating identity verification services that guarantee visitors that they have indeed reached the website they intended to be on.

“VeriSign is not only providing Secure Socket Layer but has the brand authority that can really move businesses forward,” cited Rosch.