Month: October 2009

Thieves target BT cables as scrap value rises

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The recent recovery in the price of copper has once again made telecoms cables an attractive target for criminals who aim to sell them on the scrap market. It’s understood there is a direct correlation between the rate of telecoms cable theft and the market value of copper.

“It is believed a vehicle may have been used to pull it out of the ground and then the same or a waiting vehicle used to transport it,” a Sussex police spokeswoman said, reports The Argus. [Comment: They used to do a similar thing in developing countries using trains as they went past.]

The national telco plans to rip out and scrap much of the copper network itself. It is scheduled to install fibre optic cables – either all the way to premises or to as far as streetside cabinets – across 40 per cent of the country by 2012.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/30/bt_copper_theft/

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Study: Midsize Companies Cut Security Budgets As Cyber Threats Escalate

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The study found that more than half of midsize companies surveyed globally have seen more security incidents in the past year, and a single midsized company lost $43,000 on average to security incidents.

“In the global study, 56 percent said security spending was flat, and 19 percent said it was decreasing while only 25 said it was on the increase,” said Darrell Rodenbaugh, senior vice president of global midmarket for McAfee. “In Canada 64 percent were flat, 27 percent increasing and 9 percent decreasing.”

The survey looked at companies with between 51-1000 employees, in nine different countries (Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States) with a minimum of 100 companies per country in the sample size.

The objective, Rodenbaugh said, was to understand the real costs companies are facing today, as well as understand their level of effort in security and the amount of money they spend when a threat hits.

The majority of companies also said they are seeing more threats, more incidents, with 56 percent seeing an increase in threats.
Organizations are spending lots of money reacting to the threats.
Organizations are freezing or cutting their IT budgets.

And the result is that while they spend less time and money on proactive management, they spend more time and money recovering from attacks.

“In the U.S., the typical IT professional spent six or more hours a week proactively, and less than a day recovering.” Almost half of midsize organizations surveyed (43 percent) think larger organizations with 501+ employees are most at risk for a security attack.

http://mitechnews.com/articles.asp?id=11067&sec=24

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User errors will lead to data leakage – worldwide survey on IT security

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According to Eric Domage, IDC EMEA program manager, European security products and strategies, the survey reveals that organisations believe the most significant impact of a security breach would come from the lack of control of its intellectual property (IP).

Campbell adds, “The challenge when protecting an organisation from internal attack is that traditional defences are designed to face outward, at the perimeter of a network, whereas the inside of the network remains relatively free of security controls.

“Besides, at the employee level, protection of data goes beyond technology in that it involves the human resources department and in turn, raises a range of new legal issues around areas such as monitoring and fair use”, explains Campbell, and points out that organisations tend to believe that it will add a layer of managerial and process complexity that they don’t want to confront.

It’s a technology-centric approach to managing the issue of protecting sensitive data, it’s an important strategic step forward.

http://www.prlog.org/10384661-user-errors-will-lead-to-data-leakage-worldwide-survey-on-it-security.html

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Feds’ Security Spending On a Roll: Over 8 Percent Growth Over Next Five Years

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“We see this as a bright spot in federal spending,” says John Slye, principal analyst at Input, which expects a compound annual growth rate of 8.1 percent for security from 2009 to 2014.

Input says the top 10 executive branch departments — the Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Air Force, Homeland Security, Army, Navy, Department of Energy, Health and Human Services, Justice Department, Treasury Department, and Commerce Department — account for 65 percent of all federal IT spending.

“We’ve seen that with the identity and access management market that FISMA and HSPD12 created,” he says.

Input last year forecast a 7.7 percent compounded annual growth rate for federal security spending through 2013.

http://www.darkreading.com/securityservices/security/government/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220900236

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CIA Invests In Social Media Monitoring Technology

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In-Q-Tel, the investment firm established by the CIA to support U.S. intelligence agencies, has invested in Visible Technologies, a start-up that monitors social media content on the Web.

Visible Technologies’ software-as-a-service apps are used by companies to monitor and manage their brands by observing and analyzing public opinion on the Web in real-time. Visible Technologies’ TruCAST engine “casts a net on whatever the client wants to know more about,” said senior VP Blake Cahill. Visible Technologies has been focusing increasingly on the government sector, and it has done some work through the General Services Administration, according to Cahill.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/info-management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220900005

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Information Security Still a Priority In IT Budgets

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According to PricewaterhouseCooper’s (New York) Global State of Information Security 2010 survey, information security executives are facing more challenges today than ever. Surprisingly, however, they are not being starved of the resources they need to keep company data safe.

PwC surveyed its own clients in 130 countries, plus the readers of CIO Magazine and CSO Magazine.

Technology and financial services companies consisted of the top two in terms of survey participants, at 1,250 and 1,165 respondents, respectively.

Mark Lobel, a principal with PwC in its security practice, told attendees at a conference unveiling the survey results on Wednesday that he and his team weren’t too optimistic about what they would find, given all the news of layoffs and budget cutbacks.

Even in this crisis, 38 percent of global companies said they still plan to increase their information security spending.

Forty-three percent of respondents said their companies are deferring security initiatives for capital expenditures, while 40 percent said they were deferring these initiatives for operating expenditures.

“I believe that moving from 2009 to 2010 will be a coming of age for information security,” he said.

Even so, information security executives are experiencing more pressure from the top to prove the value of their expenditures on security technology. Further findings from the survey found that there has been a steady increase in security incidents from 2008 to 2009, with 35 percent of companies reporting 1 to 9 incidents, versus 30 percent last year.

Also, data is the biggest target of cyber thieves: 23 percent this year, as opposed to 16 percent in 2008. Although respondents said 33 percent of incidents occurred because of a current employees, 39 percent didn’t know whether it was from the inside, a former employee or a hacker.

It’s no longer acceptable to reactively hear about a breach. Again, referring to the leadership role financial services has shown in data security, Lobel indicated another finding: that although the downturn is a driver for companies’ infosec spending, it had less of an impact on financial services than other sectors (38 percent for financial services versus 43 percent for technology, 42 percent for healthcare and 41 percent for the retail industry).

http://www.banktech.com/risk-management/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=LTGLRGEA3IYVFQE1GHPSKHWATMY32JVN?articleID=220800154&_requestid=525984

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