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Survey: VARs Concerned About Cybersecurity, Health Care

Posted on September 5, 2008December 30, 2021 by admini

Shoer called health-care costs one of the largest issues facing the U.S. Rising health-care costs have become a worker-recruiting issue, added Shiv Kumar, executive vice president at ZSL, a VAR in Edison, New Jersey. Considering our business size, we can’t attract or retain good workforce without offering a good benefits package which could be offered easily by large organizations because of their size,” he said.

In focus groups in late 2007 and early this year, health-care costs came up several times as a top concerns of VAR members of CompTIA, said Michael Wendy, a CompTIA spokesman.

While Shoer and Kumar focused on health-care costs as their top policy concern, they both acknowledged that cybersecurity is a major concern as well. It can be difficult to talk some customers into buying more cybersecurity products or services, they said. “We finally had the client sign off on a document that acknowledged our disapproval of this practice and basically absolved us of any responsibility for any problems resulting from this partner’s unwillingness to conform to the firm’s password policy,” he said.

For most small businesses, cybersecurity comes down to a convenience issue, Shoer added.

IT workers need training in technologies such as Web 2.0, unified communication and virtualization, Kumar said.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/150658/.html?tk=rss_news

Zombie network explosion

Posted on September 2, 2008December 30, 2021 by admini

Shadowserver figures suggest the number of command and control servers has actually decreased over the last month, following a spike in activity back in July.

Not much by way of email malware activity has been monitored, so if the latter explanation is true, then drive-by download attacks are playing a bigger role in spreading botnet client infestation.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/02/zombie_surge/

“One-Character Patch” for DNS? Not so fast

Posted on August 29, 2008December 30, 2021 by admini

Some major hosts have no TTLs or very low TTLs and, for those servers, you gain very little, he said.

“If we can’t override them — can’t override high TTLs — those sites go down for a very long time,” Kaminsky said.

“I never claimed my one-character patch would fix all bugs in bind (sic) — I don’t have that kind of power,” Somlo joked on the mailing list.

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/808

Most IT staff would steal company secrets: survey

Posted on August 28, 2008December 30, 2021 by admini

The target information included CEO passwords, customer database, research and development plans, financial reports, M&A plans and the company’s list of privileged passwords.

Identity management firm Cyber-Ark conducted the survey of 300 IT professionals in its annual review ‘Trust, Security & Passwords’.

The survey also found that one third of IT staff admitted to snooping around the network, looking at highly confidential information, such as salary details and people’s personal emails.

http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/security/cybercrime/news/index.cfm?newsid=10734

Security visualization helps make log files work

Posted on August 28, 2008December 30, 2021 by admini

“If you look at log files or system events to understand what is going on in your machines or in your network, a lot of people look at their textual logs.” The goal is to take network traffic, intrusion defense system and firewall data and begin visualizing pieces of it to create an overall picture of the company’s security posture. When you start developing the appropriate chart or graph to better flesh out the data, you can begin to see patterns and sometimes certain pieces of information stand out, Marty said.

Firewall log files would be useless with little domain expertise on staff to help generate graphs.

Marty has released a Linux CD called Data Analysis and Visualization Linux (DAVIX).

“With firewall log files, you don’t need to know what specific IP address is connecting to me from the outside,” Marty said. “You can cluster it to get a general idea of what happened and then if you want to drill down you can open up that cluster.” For example, a chart or graph could help visualize violations per Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) requirement, helping companies determine where they fall short of the standard. It can be used to audit large database management systems, such as Oracle and Microsoft’s SQL-Server to figure out who accessed a particular table, and whether the database table was altered.

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1327341,00.html

U.S. to deploy DNS Security in two years

Posted on August 28, 2008December 30, 2021 by admini

The technology, known as DNSSEC, promises to secure the domain name system (DNS) against attempts to subvert the infrastructure, such as the cache poisoning attack found by researcher Dan Kaminsky earlier this year.

Because of the technical hurdles — and the political problems in designating companies or governments to hold the keys to the domain-name system — both governments and private sector companies have held off deploying DNSSEC for more than a decade.

The OMB has set a deadline for initial implementation plans of September 5, with mutually agreed on final plans completed by October 24, 2008.

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/807