Month: January 2005

A year ago, the $10 billion-a-year insurance provider received 2.6 million spam E-mails. By November, the number had nearly doubled to 4.8 million.

As if trying to keep missives offering cheap Viagra or get-rich-quick schemes out of in-boxes weren’t enough of a job, a steadily increasing onslaught of spyware and adware is further taxing IT resources. EFunds’ Jones is working to combat all types of attacks, whether they’re brought about by spyware or other means.

UnumProvident is one of a growing number of companies beginning to investigate anti-spyware products. By and large, companies allocate more IT dollars to fighting the twin scourges of spyware and adware, while continuing to pump time and money into keeping spam of every variety under control.

Just over 70% of 400 business-technology professionals recently surveyed by InformationWeek Research will spend somewhat or significantly more money to manage spyware, and more than 60% say the same of adware. E-mail accounted for half of inbound messages in 2004, up from 40% the year prior.

Two types of small applications can be installed on PCs by specially crafted E-mail messages, “free” software downloads, and other tricks. But they steal time from IT staffers, who must handle more help-desk calls from users who can’t get rid of pop-up ads and clean up systems suffering from performance slowdowns that stealth adware or spyware installations bring on.

Kim Jones, director of global security services for electronic financial processing company eFunds Corp., knows the problems adware can cause. Criminals and hackers use spyware such as keystroke loggers and Trojan horses to capture everything typed on PCs or to take control of systems to steal user names and passwords that could be used to attack and gain access to business resources. Last summer, Jones started using MainNerve Inc.’s Adaptive Darknet Service, a network of sensors scattered about the Internet spotting hacker command-and-control networks, which is constantly updated with attacking IP addresses.

McAfee this week adds spyware blocking capability to its McAfee IntruShield network intrusion prevention app, and it’s delivering a beta version of its Anti-Spyware Enterprise Edition Module that will work with its corporate anti-virus product.

Technology already has made a dent in spam problems. UnumProvident’s Fleury has seen results: The company uses spam filtering from SurfControl plc, and despite the uptick in spam being sent to users, employees aren’t seeing many of those messages in their in-boxes.

Cox now uses two CipherTrust Inc. secure E-mail appliances, and Warlick estimates they block 99% of the 38 million spam E-mails that head Cox’s way each month.

Spam is “now a security threat,” because more spam E-mails today contain adware or spyware that users unwittingly install.

http://www.securitypipeline.com/57701881

Steve Hunt, an analyst with Forrester Research, said in the report while companies have generally treated physical security as part of the facilities department and computer security as part of the information-technology group, employee information has increasingly become integrated, allowing businesses to link the two systems.

“Locks, cameras, entry systems, and even guard desks will be upgraded to work with the same computing systems that control computer and network sign-on, identity management and security incident management,” he wrote. “Consequently, IT security vendors will rush to merge or find partnerships with their physical security brethren to respond to the new opportunities.”

The link between physical security systems and network security is another ripple emanating from the events of 11 September, 2001. Spending on such integration will double compared with 2004, reaching $1.1bn in Europe and the United States in 2005, the report said.

US government projects to integrate physical and network security, such as the Transportation Worker’s Identity Card mandated by the Transportation Security Agency and the Common Access Card used by the Department of Defense, up the lion’s share of the money being spent, Forrester predicted. The federal government has focused on integrating physical and network security following the findings of the 9/11 Commission.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39183941,00.htm

Just ask Apple Computer, which filed two lawsuits in December accusing insiders and partners of leaking proprietary information. In one case, Apple is suing two men it says distributed prerelease versions of Tiger, the next iteration of Mac OS X. In a separate action, it is suing unnamed individuals who leaked details about a forthcoming music device code-named Asteroid.

Apple’s not the only company that’s found sensitive internal information leaked to the public. Big names such as America Online, Microsoft and Cisco Systems have also been victims.

Research indicates that most security breaches are inside jobs. A recent Ponemon Institute survey of 163 Fortune 1000 companies found that roughly 70 percent of all reported security breaches were due to insiders.

“It’s much more glamorous to think of the hacker who works for some large cyber-crime ring,” said Larry Ponemon, head of the Tuscon, Ariz., think tank. “But in reality, those characters only make up a small percent of the problem.”

For more than a decade, corporations have erected digital perimeters to keep outsiders off their networks. But now discontented, reckless and greedy employees, and disgruntled former workers, can all be bigger threats than the mysterious hacker. And as more companies outsource portions of their business, vital company information can easily fall into the wrong hands.

Securing information from the inside has been largely overlooked by many companies. But headline-grabbing incidents such as the one at Apple, along with new federal and state regulations for protecting private information, are causing many companies to rethink their security strategies from the inside out. As a result, a whole new class of products has sprung up aimed at keeping employees and other insiders from sending confidential information outside the company. Developing new techniques In addition to products that control who gets access to what information, a slew of new start-ups focus on securing digital content and watching where it goes. Products in this category vary in their approach.

Some focus solely on protecting intellectual property from being leaked, while others also perform forensics analysis, digital rights management and security policy management. Some products from companies like Vontu and Vericept act as gateways in the network to track sensitive information that is being sent outside of the network. They monitor e-mail, instant messages, FTP files, and other electronic communications on corporate networks, sniffing for leaks of Social Security numbers and other sensitive information. They only prevent information from being electronically sent over the network. They do nothing to prevent people from downloading files or printing documents.

Jon Oltsik, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, says technology must also exist on PCs and other devices not only to monitor what data is traversing the network, but to establish and enforce policies regarding printing and downloading information onto disks or USB devices. Companies such as Authentica and Liquid Machines sit on the client machine tracking and limiting how recipients handle certain information.

“There isn’t one technology that will solve this problem,” Oltsik said. “You really need to take a combination of approaches.”

The no-tech Trojan horse Once inside a company or one of its partners, a trusted employee can do enormous damage. Often such leaks disclose the most sensitive of data. “Insiders know where the information is located and how the security systems work,” Oltsik said. “They know what information is valuable and what’s not.”

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5520016.html