Email
Print
FeedThwarting pirates at Chemical Abstracts
A department store has to worry about shoplifting. A bank has concerns over embezzling. But what can be stolen from Chemical Abstracts?
Something pretty major, as it turns out—access to SciFinder, an online search engine holding a massive amount of scientific information. For instance, searching SciFinder for the effects of caffeine on pregnant women would yield all relevant research on that topic.
The academic tool is “the heart and soul of what Chemical Abstracts does,” says Chris McCue, vice president of marketing.
Chemical Abstracts sells licenses to SciFinder to corporations and academic institutions, and they, in turn, provide access to the web-based data service to those with proper credentials. For the most part, that means industrial scientists and scientific faculty and students.
But nearly a decade ago, Chemical Abstracts realized that SciFinder was being pirated. The pirates were selling user names and passwords that would gain access to SciFinder through a college website. Such offerings were posted on Taobao, an eBay-type outfit in China.
The hole in the SciFinder dike, says Michael Dennis, vice president for planning and development and legal administration, is at the university level. College networks are less secure than corporate ones, he adds. “A university’s population is changing each year,” McCue notes.
But sometimes the university doesn’t change as rapidly. It’s like going back to your high school and finding out that the combination to your old locker still works.
The problem is increasing. “We’re shutting down hundreds of fraudulent accounts every week,” Dennis says. “We’re seeing more of it now, maybe because we’re better able to identify it.”
In this cat-and-mouse game, the thieves constantly are improving their methods. “Things have ramped up on both sides,” Dennis says. McCue adds, “We are working with the universities to make them aware of this.”
For Chemical Abstracts, the stakes are high. Since SciFinder was introduced in 1995, McCue says, “It has been a phenomenal product. There is nothing else like it on the market. It has transformed research.”
That’s why it’s worth stealing. And that’s why Chemical Abstracts is increasing its efforts to guard it.
But don’t ask how. “We’re not telling the bad guys where our motion detectors are,” Dennis says.
