December 2003 – Page 8 – CyberSecurity Institute

How To Use Encryption On Database Contents

Posted on December 7, 2003December 30, 2021 by admini

It may be time to protect your data where it lives–in your database.

But you can’t encrypt everything in your database. Indexed fields, for example, can’t be encrypted because your database-management software will sort the encrypted strings in hexadecimal values, which won’t match the real, unencrypted form. So your index, which is supposed to speed access to the data by preordering it, won’t work. Even if you could relate the encrypted index field to the original data, the collation order wouldn’t match.

Until databases support encryption natively, encrypted indices will be a problem. Remember that any indices generated from encrypted fields won’t be valid, either. And because these fields don’t relate to the actual data, it’ll be harder for the database administrator and developer to debug problems.

Database software, such as Sybase’s, lets you create encrypted databases.

Ingrian Networks’ DataSecure Platform, which lets you encrypt certain fields before you enter them in the database and automatically decrypts them on the way out, has been around for a couple of years.

Bottom line: When building your disk capacity for database encryption, anticipate that your data will triple or quadruple in size.

More info: [url=http://www.securitypipeline.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=16600160]http://www.securitypipeline.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=16600160[/url]

Security fears push users to open source

Posted on December 5, 2003December 30, 2021 by admini

“Without a new killer app in Office, the upgrade cycle looks to be gradual until new XML-based technologies take hold of the broader market,” said the report. Professor Neil Barratt, technical director at security consultant Information Risk Management, said: “My reading of this is that it’s a shot across the bows.

“The main beef most CIOs have is patching; the perception is that the Microsoft patching system needs a lot more work.

More info: [url=http://www.vnunet.com/News/1151313]http://www.vnunet.com/News/1151313[/url]

Agencies to get security scores

Posted on December 4, 2003December 30, 2021 by admini

The report card is intended to raise the visibility of the need for strong information security, said FISMA’s author, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.).

Information security will garner attention if there is a massive cyberattack that could compromise the economy or homeland security, he said.

More info: [url=http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/1201/web-fisma-12-02-03.asp]http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2003/1201/web-fisma-12-02-03.asp[/url]

Tech spending to rise in 2004, says IDC

Posted on December 4, 2003December 30, 2021 by admini

“IT spending is more correlated with corporate profits than (gross national product) or other factors, and corporate profits are increasing,” said Frank Gens, senior vice president of research at IDC.

Servers running so-called x86 processors and Windows or Linux will continue to grow at the expense of RISC-Unix servers. In 2004, x86 servers will account for more revenue overall, and Linux will account for 10 percent of the servers sold in the United States. “Although manufacturers continue to promote the concept, real investments in server virtualization and other techniques to more efficiently use computing resources will continue to lag,” the prediction said.

The value of IT goods and services coming to the United States that are produced by offshore labor will hit $16 billion, doubling 2003’s total.

Not only will large U.S. companies continue to outsource, Indian service providers will gain market share as well.

The number of public Wi-Fi hot spots will grow from the current 50,000, to 85,000 by the end of the year, IDC said.

Chinese IT spending will hit $30 billion and grow at four times the rate of that of the rest of the world. Eastern European nations, meanwhile, will see a surge in spending as 10 new nations, most from Eastern Europe, join the European Union.

More info: [url=http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5113558.html]http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5113558.html[/url]

Central Control for Your Network

Posted on December 4, 2003December 30, 2021 by admini

It includes asset management, device discovery, software license management, PC remote control, software distribution, and operating system recovery and migration.

Macintosh support has also been improved in this version.

To combat any network degradation and to increase performance to remote computers, LANDesk 8 provides bandwidth throttling, multicast distribution, and checkpoint restarts. For example, to distribute a security update to all Microsoft Office users or a new virus definition to all your users, you can simply specify the maximum bandwidth and eliminate congestion issues.

Using its peer download technology, LANDesk 8 will serve the appropriate packages to a select number of users across your network’s various subnets, and those machines will in turn serve them to their peers.

In the event that a machine shuts down halfway through a transfer, the byte-level checkpoint restart feature will ensure that the update gets efficiently completed upon restart.

LANDesk 8 presents a lot of management capabilities in one package, as do competitors such as Microsoft SMS and Novell ZenWorks.

While the initial experience can be a little daunting, the performance enhancements that LANDesk 8 delivers (namely the multicast and incremental file-transfer capabilities) are worth the initial start-up pains.

More info: [url=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1399924,00.asp?kc=PCRSS02129TX1K0000530]http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1399924,00.asp?kc=PCRSS02129TX1K0000530[/url]

Most virulent worms of November

Posted on December 4, 2003December 30, 2021 by admini

There is the usual dispute over which virus is most common, but the Sober and Swen worms have scored highly.

“Sober has had a big impact because it’s in English and German and many Germans don’t expect viruses in their own language,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“We’re also seeing new MiMail viruses cropping up and there seems to be organised intent behind it; the authors have targeted users and anti-spam websites. So far 12 MiMail variants have been found, ranging from simple email harvesters to ‘phishing’ attacks that seek users’ PayPal or bank details. The worm is thought to have originated in Eastern Europe.

Klez H is still in most charts, making it one of the most persistent viruses in history.

More info: [url=http://www.infomaticsonline.co.uk/News/1151236]http://www.infomaticsonline.co.uk/News/1151236[/url]