Cyber Security Institute
Thursday, January 21, 2010
5 tips for cybersecurity-training your employees
When Dennis Lauer joined the Millennium Challenge Corp. as chief information officer two years ago, the young federal program’s growing pains included a startling lack of security. It was an almost free-for-all atmosphere, he recalled. Employees installed Apple iTunes on the agency’s network and regularly downloaded malware via pop-ups that harbored malicious code. “Almost every day we had [surreptitious] viruses, and people didn’t know not to click on” them, Lauer said. The security situation began to change for the better when the office adopted new security policies and practices. Launched in 2004, MCC had adopted a few information technology shortcuts in the early years as the U.S. government corporation embarked on its mission of helping underdeveloped nations.
Enterprises Look for Help Managing Security Logs
Managed SIM services started to gain momentum over the past two years, largely due to compliance mandates such as the Payment Card Industry data security requirements. Managed security services have been growing in popularity over the past several years, and the latest task enterprises are looking to offload to an outside provider is security information management.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Product Watch: NitroSecurity Integrates Log Management With SIEM
SIEM vendor NitroSecurity next week will roll out a new log management product and management software that brings the two traditionally separate worlds under one roof. The new NitroView ESM Version 8.4 and new Enterprise Log Manager (ELM) tools are fully integrated and provide a single view of all SIEM and log management functions.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
IDC Expects A/P Security and Vulnerability Management Market to Achieve Largest Growth in 2010 as Or
According to the figures recently released in the IDC Asia/Pacific Semiannual Security Software Tracker, most security markets in the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region are expected to post strong double-digit growth in 2010 compared to 2009. According to the study, the largest growth will be in the Security and Vulnerability Management (SVM) market which is forecast to grow some 19% to US$115.44 million in 2010. The Identity and Access Management (IAM) market is estimated to grow by 15.2% to reach US$ 326.38 million.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Virtualization security remains a work in progress
While adoption of server virtualization is proceeding at a gallop, the effort to refine virtualization security reached only a slow trot in 2009. Roughly 18% of server workloads have been virtualized, and research firm Gartner expects that number to climb to 28% in 2010 and almost 50% by 2012. But adapting traditional firewall, intrusion detection, antimalware and other types of security and monitoring software to run optimally in this radically changed hypervisor-based architecture is still very much a work in progress.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Airport breaches on the rise nationwide
Government officials imposed stricter airport security measures after the failed Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit. Such breakdowns are rare, officials said, but a government report released in October shows breaches at U.S. airports nearly doubled over five years. “That’s only the breaches we know about,” said Mike Boyd, president of the Colorado-based aviation consulting firm Boyd Group International. The Transportation Security Administration reported 1,442 security breaches at the nation’s 450 commercial airports in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2004, according to the Government Accountability Office report.
Friday, January 08, 2010
CSI Computer Crime and Security Survey Shows Poor Security Awareness Training in Public and Private
It’s no secret that security pros worry about cyber-attacks that can happen anytime in a networked world, but apparently, they also worry about how much end-users know about good computer hygiene and their organizations’ abilities to assess how secure they are - or aren’t. The Computer Security Institute (CSI), which holds conferences and educational events for IT workers, released the 14th edition of its annual CSI Computer Crime and Security Survey in December 2009, with an assessment of how respondents felt about their own cyber-security situations and what that assessment may mean for 2010. A whopping 43.4 percent of them said that less than 1 percent of their security budget was allocated to awareness training, and 55 percent said current investments in this area were inadequate.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Log Management Appliance facilitates regulatory compliance [and chain of custody]
netForensics, Inc., a leader in the Information Security Management market, today announced data security enhancements to nFX Cinxi One. By incorporating the latest digital signing and encryption technologies into the industry’s most comprehensive log management solution, nFX Cinxi One creates a secure chain of custody to ensure the integrity of critical enterprise log information needed to demonstrate regulatory compliance.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
World Cup Cybercrime 2010
The Research team in ESET have put their heads together to discuss the likely shape of things to come in the next twelve months in computer security and cybercrime (and cyberwarfare, to use one of the buzzwords of the moment).
Friday, December 18, 2009
Security Heavyweights Predict 2010 Threats
Upcoming security threats for 2010, as predicted by CA, Cisco, Symantec, Websense and a group of experts at Independent Security Evaluators. Social networks are going to become a prime target for cybercriminals in 2010, according to security predictions from annual security reports released this month by CA Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Symantec Corp. A prediction list gathered from Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) and another list issued by Websense Inc. also anticipate increased threats on or towards major social networking sites. Social networks was the only prediction highlighted by all five sources, but increased use of search engine optimization (SEO) attacks, shorts URLs and malvertising, as well as an upcoming focus on smartphones and the Mac OS X platform, were also noted on multiple accounts.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Cloud Security Alliance releases updated guidance
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) on Thursday released the second version of its guidance for secure adoption of cloud computing services. The new version, Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing—Version 2.1, provides more specifics in several areas and more actionable advice, said Jim Reavis, Cloud Security Alliance co-founder and executive director.
Sun Unveils Cloud Computing Security Tools
As part of its overall strategy to help customers and partners build public and private clouds that are open and interoperable, Sun Microsystems on Thursdsay unveiled innovative open source cloud security capabilities and announced support for the latest Security Guidance from the Cloud Security Alliance. Sun is steadfast in its commitment to providing best practices and technologies that help users safeguard their critical data in the enterprise and in the cloud. The introduction of Sun’s Cloud Security architectural building blocks will help deliver enterprise-grade cloud services that are highly secure, available and easily manageable when used in public, private or hybrid cloud environments.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Supply Chain Security Threats: 5 Game-Changing Forces
Supply chain security is being remade by black swan events, economic blahs, and more. What can a CSO do to keep goods and information flowing? As any CSO knows, it’s not enough to mind your own business. You have to look after your business partners as well, across all links that connect to your supply chain—-whether that chain is physical or virtual. And that goes double in times of rapid change and high stress. “The threat environment is constantly changing,” says Ryan Brewer, CISO for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “Sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on what’s most important.” Who would have thought three years ago that piracy on the supply chain would be such a big concern? Sometimes the big worry is terrorism, sometimes it’s natural disasters, lately it’s malware. Here are the top five developments CSOs say have the biggest potential to wreak havoc on their supply chains.
LogLogic releases version 4.9 of its log management software
Version 4.9 contains more than 40 new features, including built-in support for direct connectivity to Fibre Channel SAN environments without additional gear or appliances and new device management capabilities that provide more system operation controls.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Sharjah, N.Emirates to Get Cyber Crime Court
A federal court to deal with cyber crime cases in Sharjah and the Northern Emirates will soon be established in Sharjah, according to the Minister of Justice.
Hackers Are Defeating Tough Authentication, Gartner Warns
Security measures such as one-time passwords and phone-based user authentication, considered among the most robust forms of security, are no longer enough to protect online banking transactions against fraud, a new report from research firm Gartner Inc. warns. Increasingly, such measures are overwhelmed by online criminals looking to pillage bank accounts using valid login credentials stolen from customers, the report said. Going forward, banks need to quickly implement additional layers of security to protect their customers from falling victim to online fraud, said Avivah Litan, Gartner analyst and the report’s author.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Internet Security Firms Now Targeting Region
An anticipated upsurge in Internet users in Africa and more specifically the East African region is drawing the attention of cyber security firms. The region is now much more prone to Internet threats and cyber crime.
Breach Security releases WebDefend Global Event Manager
Breach Security has released WebDefend Global Event Manager that works in conjunction with the new web application firewall service offered by Akamai Technologies. When deployed with Akamai’s web application firewall service, the WebDefend Global Event Manager defends against global application security threats by enabling customers to make distributed cloud and data centre defense-in-depth architectures operational, the company said.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Identity theft prevention is security spending focus
Organisation expect their largest security IT expenditure to be in identity theft and abuse prevention solutions, followed by spending to prevent external threats, unintentional privacy breaches, remote access abuse and spam. The global survey of over 400 companies with 500 or more employees found that organisations felt they would most likely have to deal with PC theft or loss (54%), spam attack (45%), misuse or hacking (45%), and spying tools (45%) as the most likely security incidents, while external threats (52%), internal intentional misuse (49%), remote access abuse (47%), identity theft (47%), and virus attack (43%) would be the most damaging security incidents.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Internet posting prompts TSA investigation
Five Transportation Security Administration employees have been placed on administrative leave since it was discovered that sensitive guidelines about airport passenger screening were posted on the Internet. The move was disclosed as senators questioned administration officials yesterday about the second embarrassing security flap at the Homeland Security Department in as many weeks. Assistant Homeland Security Secretary David Heyman told senators yesterday that a full investigation into the Internet security lapse is under way, and that the TSA employees have been taken off duty pending results of that probe.
CA Inc: CA Report: Fake Security Software, Search Engines and Social Networks 2009’s Top Internet Th
The latest State of the Internet 2009 report issued today by CA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CA) states that the most notable 2009 online threats were rogue/fake security software, major search engines, social networks and Web 2.0 threats.
Top five security challenges of 2010
Social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace will pose one of the biggest threats in 2010, according to TriGeo Network Security, a provider of security information and event management (SIEM) technology for midmarket enterprises. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, the number of data breaches in 2009 is on track to drop by nearly 50 percent when compared with 2008. Two more American states will pass data breach laws.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
New cloud hacking service steals Wi-Fi passwords
For US$34 (£20), a new cloud-based hacking service can crack a WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) network password in just 20 minutes, its creator says. The WPA Cracker service bills itself as a useful tool for security auditors and penetration testers who want to know if they could break into certain types of WPA networks. It works because of a known vulnerability in Pre-shared Key (PSK) networks, usually used by home and small-business users.
Germany plans Internet virus phonecall alerts
German officials are planning to step up the fight against online viruses by phoning Internet users to warn them their computers are infected, an industry summit was told Tuesday. Germany’s federal computer security agency (BSI) and the German internet business federation ECO said Internet providers already had the technology to know which of their customers were infected. Germany would set up a national help desk to advise people step by step over the telephone on ridding computers of viruses.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Smart grids may be prone to cyberattacks
Smart-grid networks that depend heavily on technology both for energy efficiency and for better management of electricity consumers are vulnerable to cyberattacks that can endanger entire cities, industry findings show. Ann Whyte, a spokeswoman for Defense Support Services LLC (DS2), a Lockheed Martin and Day & Zimmermann company, said suppliers that are planning to install electricity smart meters in every home by 2020 need to adopt new power-line communications technology to ensure the grids remain safe from cyberattacks.
Hackers Targeting Banks, Social Sites
A yearly security report released Tuesday by technology company Cisco says that banks and online social networks are growing targets for cyber criminals. Strategies used to hack into social-networking sites include grabbing passwords and then utilizing the fact that people only have one password for all their accounts. Cisco said that a specific computer worm has been spread to more than three million computers since 2008.
Industrialisation Of Hacking Will Dominate The Next Decade
As we approach the dawn of a new decade, battle lines are firmly drawn with UK Organisation’s squaring up to Cyber Criminals. The industrialisation of hacking—Clear definitions of roles are developing within the hacking community forming a supply chain that starkly resembles that of drug cartels. The weapons of choice will be automated tools applied through botnets. His companyrecently tracked and analysed a compromise that affected hundreds of servers. The scale of this attack, and others like it, is enormous and would not be achievable without total automation.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Security incidents at an all-time high
The Computer Security Institute (CSI) pre-released selected findings from its 2009 Computer Crime and Security Survey. The survey, now in its 14th year, found that average losses due to security incidents are down again this year (from $289,000 per respondent to $234,244 per respondent), though they are still above 2006 figures.
Respondents reported big jumps in incidence of:
password sniffing (Over 9 percent last year)
Web site defacement (Over 6 percent last year)
financial fraud (Over 12 percent last year)
denials of service (Over 21 percent last year)
malware infection (Over 50 percent last year).
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Choosing SIEM: Security Info and Event Management Dos and Don’ts
Advice from the front lines on choosing and using a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) product
SIEM: A Growing Market Worldwide revenue for SIEM was $663.3 million in 2008 and is expected to grow to $1.4 billion in 2013, which is a compound annual growth rate of 16 percent, according to IDC.
Meanwhile, Gartner estimates that SIEM was a $1 billion market in 2008, with growth of 30 percent that year. Historically, event management—-or SEM—-has driven this market, but today’s growth is mainly related to regulatory compliance, with secondary requirements for effective threat monitoring, according to Kelly Kavanaugh, an analyst at Gartner. For example, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) requires log management, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires privileged user reporting, he says.
LogLogic Announces U.S. Patent for Storage of Raw Log Data
The patented system collects logs from network devices and analyzes and stores the data contained in those logs. The patent also covers LogLogic’s management console, which allows users to search and run reports on log data. By acknowledging that LogLogic’s system is unique, the patent recognizes LogLogic’s seminal innovation in the industry and its pioneering first step in advancing log management technology.