Companies Say Security Breach Could Destroy Their Business

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23% said they were able to estimate the total annual cost of data leakage, putting the figure at $1.82 million.

Just last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it had exposed the personal identifying information on about 150,000 people over the last 26 years. The agency admitted inadvertently exposing online sensitive information, such as names and Social Security numbers, in a publicly available database, which had existed since 1981.

People are getting fed up with their personal information leaking out into areas where it could be scooped up by criminals working online. A report came out earlier this month from Javelin Strategy & Research showing that 77% of 2,750 consumers polled said they would stop shopping at stores that suffer data breaches.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199201085

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Microsoft adds security muscle

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“Microsoft is entering a very competitive market and one that is new to them,” said Andreas Marx, an antivirus software specialist at the University of Magdeburg in Germany. “It will take some years, perhaps five, for Microsoft to be up to par,” said Andreas Clementi of AV Comparatives, an organization that tests antivirus products.

Microsoft started selling its Windows Live OneCare consumer antivirus product almost a year ago. The security research and response team at Microsoft, as at traditional antivirus providers, investigates and responds to threats. Turning irritation into opportunity Security used to be just something that Microsoft got hammered on, but five years after Chairman Bill Gates launched his Trustworthy Computing push, Microsoft now sees it as a market it had not previously tapped.

“Some of our customers view this a little controversially, in a sense that if we could solve these problems at the root, why is there a need for extra products,” Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said this week.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6179582.html

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Malware Spikes in 1Q As Hackers Increasingly Infect Websites

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With computer users becoming more aware of how to protect against e-mail-based malware, hackers have turned to the Web as their preferred vector of attack. The trojan is typically found in html or ASP files, and can download and execute files from malicious Web sites to infected computers.

The company’s researchers found that 70%, were legitimate Web sites that were vulnerable to attack because they were unpatched, poorly coded, or had not been maintained by their owners. They also found that 12.8% were hosting malicious script, while Windows malware was responsible for infecting 10.7%.

“What’s most worrying is that so many Web sites are falling victim because the owners are failing to properly maintain them and keep up to date with their patches,” said Carole Theriault, a senior security consultant at Sophos, in a written statement.

“The average Internet user assumes sites like the Miami Dolphins homepage are safe to access, but by targeting a whole range of Internet pages, hackers are successfully infecting a larger number of unwary surfers.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=122469&f_src=darkreading_section_318

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Sweetening the Honeypot

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“We are aware that in the past installing and maintaining and analyzing data from honeynets has been somewhat resource intensive,” says Ralph Logan, principal with The Logan Group and vice president of the Honeynet Project. The services are based on a new version of the alliance’s Capture-HPC client honeypot software. He says the tools are intended for organizations that can’t or don’t want to have their own client honeynet.

Meanwhile, the Honeynet Project’s soon-to-be-announced Global Distributed Honeynet, a distributed network of honeynets, automatically analyzes honeypot attack data gathered from various honeypot and honeynet locations around the world.

Kevin Mandia, who worked on the Honeynet Project until 2001, says honeynets are great for research and academia, but he would not recommend any of his clients in the government and enterprise world put one up.

Honeynets determine the “who and why” of insider attacks, notes Logan, versus security products such as firewalls and IDS that look more at the when, how, and what.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=122352&WT.svl=news2_5

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The RAND Corporation last week sounded the alarm for refocusing the nation’s attention on a potentia

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Lurie said progress has been made in using technology to improve communications and pandemic surveillance but that more investment was needed.

As a step toward establishing methods to measure whether a community is ready for a large-scale health emergency, RAND recently convened an expert panel to come to a clear definition of public health preparedness.

http://govhealthit.com/article102525-04-20-07-Web

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Users Confess Security Fears

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The exec explained that Six Flags, which owns 29 parks in the U.S. and Mexico, is in the middle of a major IT restructuring, which involves “segmenting” different parts of the business for security purposes.

“For example,” he said, “if we bring Kodak in to sell photos to our customers, they are on their segment and it can’t be hacked into.”

Encryption was also high on the agenda during the panel debate, prompted by the apparent ambivalence of many IT managers toward the technology. Just over a quarter of respondents confirmed that they encrypt laptop data, although only 8 percent lock down data on all devices, such as USB drives.

The biggest gripe from the panelists concerned the lack of security for portable media such as USB drives, which is something of an ongoing source of frustration for many IT managers.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=122196&WT.svl=news2_2

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