Category: Trends

Governments in Western Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East have projects in launch mode or in the planning stages.

Even in the U.S.–which like the U.K. has long resisted the urge to require citizens to bear ID cards–federal officials are pushing a de facto national ID. ID card projects around the world include efforts to collect biometric data, such as fingerprints, on citizens and permanent residents. The identifiers get stored on a microprocessor chip embedded in a digital card and on a central database.

Although officials often try to promote the technology as bringing government closer to the people, at bottom they see it as one of the most effective ways to stem the flow of illegal immigrants, crack down on ID fraud and, for many countries, reduce the threat of terrorism. Among the large national ID projects on the drawing board in the West, France and the U.K. are tying their cards to planned rollouts of electronic passports. And although critics of the plans, led by privacy advocates and fiscal conservatives, have been gaining strength of late, officials are not likely to back down, especially after the recent terrorist attacks in London.

A vast market Reliable estimates of the ID card tech market are difficult to come by. U.S.-based equity research firm Morgan Keegan last year estimated governments worldwide spent $4.8 billion in 2003 to identify and track citizens and residents, mainly through the use of low-tech cards and associated databases and network infrastructure. That is expected to grow to $10.7 billion by 2007, fueled largely by the higher costs for chip-based, or “smart,” cards and biometrics, including the biometric databases and readers.
“National ID has big growth, and that’s purely being driven by China.” Anoop Ubhey, analyst, Frost & Sullivan Smart card suppliers project they will ship 60 million government ID cards worldwide this year, up by a third from 2004. The estimate includes some health cards that patients use to file their insurance claims.
U.S.-based printer and PC giant Hewlett-Packard has seized on such projections to help it tout a “National Identity System” offering, which it announced in late May. HP, eager to reduce its dependence on sales of ink cartridges and the fiercely competitive PC business, has cast itself in the role of systems integrator to governments around the world. It hopes to sell officials on complete “identity management systems,” including biometric verification, smart cards and networking software. For this it has enlisted various IT “partners,” including Microsoft. “It’s a crying need from those governments,” says Jim Ganthier, worldwide marketing director for HP’s Defense, Intelligence and Public Safety unit.

U.S.-based research firm Frost & Sullivan isn’t quite as bullish on the market. It estimates governments worldwide issued just 12.4 million electronic ID cards to citizens and permanent residents last year. It predicts that will increase to 450 million cards a year in 2009. But much of that growth will come from one massive project. “National ID has big growth, and that’s purely being driven by China,” says Anoop Ubhey, an analyst for Frost & Sullivan. “We certainly don’t think the whole project will be completed by 2008.” And Beijing is keeping card costs low and restricting almost the entire $6 billion-plus project to domestic vendors.

http://news.com.com/Tough+road+for+identity+tech/2100-7341_3-5839928.html?part=rss&tag=5839928&subj=news

Like any other critical enterprise risk, identity theft has reached a point where it makes sense for companies to provide a corporate benefit to protect employees and the company itself. As anyone who has had his or her identity stolen can relate, the experience is both memorable and rehabilitating. It has become so pronounced that volunteer programs in some states, like California, have set up centers whose full-time role is to help people get back on their feet. One of these organizations, the ID Theft Resource Center, recently identified a new and vicious type of theft: identity theft of children.

It is a growing concern as an underage child is typically not in the market for credit lines, and so the problem could go undiscovered until the child applies for that first car loan or school loan. Their credit could be permanently damaged, creating serious problems for them much later on in life. For adults identity theft can mean weeks and months of time spent closing bogus accounts, contacting creditors, and correcting credit reports. During this time, the adult, who is typically also someone’s employee, is clearly not focused on his or her job or much of anything else. Remember, until the ID issue is cleared up, their home may be at risk, their cars could be repossessed, and they may be unable to effectively pay bills. There will be no higher priority for them and, from the viewpoint of their company, they are just as unavailable, perhaps even more so, then if their home was lost or they had critically ill family member.

It is part of a corporation’s responsibility is to ensure the continued productivity of its workforce and healthcare benefits certainly speaks to that. In 2003, the Identity Theft Resource Center published a detailed report noting the impact of identity theft. The organizations that the victim must turn to often seem to treat that victim very poorly.

Financial Identity Theft: This is where a victim’s social security number is stolen and used to open a series of fraudulent accounts ranging from loans (particularly lines of credit and credit cards), leases (cars and apartments), checking accounts, and telephone services.

Criminal Identity Theft: This is where the identity is stolen and used by a criminal in place of their own so the crime tracks back to the victim not the criminal.

Identity Cloning: In this scenario, the identity thief actually uses the victim’s identity to get paperwork, credit lines and pay rent. The thieves are often used illegal immigrants, felons, people avoiding judgments (like child support), and anyone hoping to leave their ‘old life’ behind.

http://www.securitypipeline.com/166402571

The trend in the last four years saw the number of infections increase slightly after the first quarter, then decrease to lower levels in the last quarter.

But this quarter’s 10,248,989 infections is a big leap from the last quarter and this number is expected to increase in the next two quarters.

North America, which is the home to many large and prominent industries, remains as the favourite target of Malware authors in the past quarters. This may be due to the new trend of Malware slanting on profit more than destructiveness, it said.

http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=229353&ssid=29&sid=env

The study, conducted by Infonetics Research, is based on interviews with network managers from small, medium and large organizations for five markets.

The study revealed the following findings: Security remains top concern when implementing VPNs, rated a barrier by over 33 percent of the respondents, most respondents keep VPN products in use for 2-4 years across, total penetration of SSL VPN for remote access if fairly high, with 39 percent of remote access respondents using it now, 14 percent use fully managed VPN services and the money is spread across a wide range of providers.

“VPN and firewall appliances are the most popular devices for deploying VPNs across size groups and verticals, followed by router-based products,” said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for VPNs and security at Infonetics Research. All VPN/firewall appliances are folding in additional security technologies, and the line between VPN/firewall devices and integrated security appliances is rapidly disappearing.”

http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=763

A recent survey results, conducted by Proofpoint, indicate the rising prominence of outbound email as a source of risk for corporations.

The survey found that more than 63% of US corporations with 1,000 or more employees either employ or plan to employ staff to read or otherwise analyze outbound email, 36% of US companies employ staff to monitor email today with another 26.5% saying they intend to employ such staff in the future.

In the largest companies (those with more than 20,000 employees) this practice is even more common – 40% employ staff to monitor email today and an additional 32% plan to employ such staff in the future.

UK companies are just as likely to be losing valuable intellectual property via email, potentially running afoul of privacy and data protection regulations and opening themselves up to costly litigation due to ageist, racist or sexist email content. Fortunately, “big brother” tactics aren’t required to keep outbound email under control. By putting the right technology, policies and processes in place companies can greatly reduce the financial, legal and regulatory risks related to outbound email without resorting to reading employee email, “said Gary Steele, CEO of Proofpoint Inc.

http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=755

By extending security to the Internet cloud, denial-of-service attacks, for example, never reach the gateway.

“We would take what an MSSP does and mesh that with our infrastructure so that the service provider and carrier becomes one,” said AT&T CISO Ed Amoroso.

CISOs, meanwhile, will still have network responsibilities like setting policy and aligning policy with an enterprise business model. They’ll be alleviated of costly signature updates and license renewals.

“Carriers and ISPs will provides these services for you,” Gartner research director John Pescatore said.

Gartner research director Greg Young identified seven selection criteria IT managers should use when purchasing an IPS.

“I could see some [savings] with these services, but they’d have to be secure by definition,” said Neil Delaney, IT infrastructure manager with NJ Manufacturers of New Jersey. “The SLA with the carrier would have to say no DoS attacks, no scanning, no RPC viruses getting through. And let’s say I push all this to the cloud, does that mean I don’t have a firewall on my side anymore?”

In the meantime, Gartner cautions that it may be more crucial than ever to establish secure zones between IT systems and the Internet.

Attacks are maturing beyond broad-based worms, and now target specific applications and business processes putting additional perimeter pressure on managers to deploy tools like next-generation firewalls that combine IPS and a Web application firewall, in addition to traditional IDS and IPS defenses. “You’re not going to see mass signatures that protect anymore,” Pescatore said.

Next generation firewalls that do deep-packet inspections from vendors like Juniper Networks, Check Point and Fortinet employ a heuristics engine and allow all network traffic and behavior, except those which policy says it must block.

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci1095562,00.html