Electronic discrimination

Like many companies, we have employees who work remotely and to support these employees we’ve had seamless connectivity to the office for many years.  Unfortunately. this remote access recently allowed hackers to launch a brute force attack on our phone system (although it was quickly discovered and access was disabled before any damage was done).  The answer is easy with static IP addresses and more intelligent routing, but here’s the quandary:  we know the real IP address for the hackers, and the suggestion from our technology folks was to deny access to all IP addresses originating from that country.  Rather than decide who’s good and bad, just assume everyone from that country is bad and electronically discriminate against all. It reminded me that many years ago a filter for the word “Nigeria” was added to our email system.  We don’t do business there and we’re not interested in helping any of their numerous “Princes” move money out of that country, so at the time the filter made sense.  Other than missing a few Economist newsletters over the years, I can’t imagine the keyword filter has caused any issues, and I paused when considering if the filter should be removed.  And that’s the problem.  I doubt we’re the only company filtering Nigeria, and I know we’re not the only company now filtering the VoIP hacker’s country.  Filters are easy to add but difficult to remove, and a few people being uncivil on the Web can electronically doom an entire group.  Will the good people in Nigeria ever know why their emails go unanswered?  Do the honest people using Ciberbunker’s services appreciate their recent electronic isolation?  Governments need to take a harder look at the long term consequences of hacking and spamming and implement stricter laws that make these activities very unattractive.  Otherwise, in the long term they’ll find electronic isolation is easy to implement but hard to undo.  Oh, and if you email me about this post, don’t include the word “Nigeria.”