Author: admini

Cybercrime takes back seat to brand as CSO priority

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Howard Schmidt, a former White House security advisor, said the future of security lies in it being baked into systems, networks and processes. Schmidt added that consolidation in the sector was aiding that process with deals in the last couple of years, such as EMC buying RSA Security and Symantec combining with Veritas.

ISC2 board director Richard Nealon said security chiefs need increasingly to play a role in broader risk management, and applauded the role of regulations in mandating more secure regimes at organisations. “Until now, we’ve led a blessed life and our biggest threat was people who didn’t have a lot of malice, motivation, technology or education… They were script kiddies or enthusiasts, and most of the threats came from that vector.”

Now there is motivation and there is money to be made. They’ll produce a business plan, seek funding, allocate resources, and they basically do it for profit motives.

“Security used to be mainly technology then process, so you would have a technology control such as anti-virus or intrusion-detection, and a process such as patching and updating.”

ISC2 board director and consultant Peter Berlich said that although the profile of security is much greater than previously, the roles of chief security officers were still dependent on the nature of employers and industries.

http://www.cio.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&ArticleID=2761

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Microsoft: Vulnerabilities down, threats up

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The amount of malware removed from PCs by Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) jumped 40 percent during the last six months of 2007.

Microsoft’s semi-annual report uses data from various public sources as well as Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), Windows Defender, Windows Live OneCare, and Exchange Hosted Services.

At the RSA conference earlier this month, Microsoft called for an information-technology industry strategy to increase trust in the Internet. While Microsoft issued fewer bulletins and patched fewer flaws in 2007, the number of flaws in Microsoft Office jumped, though the company pointed out that most only seriously affected earlier versions of the program.

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/727?ref=rss

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NetWitness Integrates With Enterprise Consoles

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“In order to effectively ensure security, organizations often need forensic evidence and detailed analytics beyond those provided by the alerts of IDS, ADS, and SIEM products,” said Michael Montecillo, Analyst with Enterprise Management Associates.

“SIEMLink bridges the gap between high-level alerts and the information necessary to detect issues such as zero day attacks, designer malware and false positives.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=151709&f_src=darkreading_section_297

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New Tool Lets Enterprises Manage Security on Multiple Linux Servers

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The good news about open source security tools is that they’re cheap and don’t require much administration.

The security tools available in the open source environment are easy to procure, but they don’t offer a central method of handling administration across multiple servers.

Trusted Computer Solutions Inc. tomorrow will attempt to jump into this void with the introduction of Security Blanket 2.0 Enterprise Edition, an automated “system lock down” and security management tool for Linux operating systems that can manage all local and remote Linux servers from a centralized Web-based management console. The idea is to make it easier for larger Linux environments, such as government and educational organizations, to do the “hardening” process required to meet security compliance requirements, says Jamie Adams, senior developer at TCS.

“It helps you figure out what needs to be configured, and then it helps you do the configuration.”

Currently, the primary open source tool for security administration is Bastille, but Bastille can’t configure multiple servers from a central location and doesn’t always meet current standards for compliance. The Enterprise version enables administrators to easily group Linux servers, associate a lockdown profile with a group of servers, scan all servers within a group to determine compliance, and configure the server operating systems to the lockdown level of the chosen profile.

Security Blanket 2.0 Enterprise includes the security guidelines recommended by the Center for Internet Security (CIS), the Defense Information Security Agency (DISA) Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs), and select guidelines from the SANS Institute’s defined risks associated with Linux.

Automation might increase organizations’ interest in server hardening, which many still don’t do, said Forrester Research in a report issued last year.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=151607&WT.svl=news2_1

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Enterprises Slow Fight Against Malicious Code

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“In 2005, there were a lot of [malware-driven] attacks going on, but now, a lot of companies feel they’ve done things to mitigate them,” says Rick Blum, director of strategic marketing for BT’s INS services and administrator of the survey… There’s also greater acceptance of risk in many enterprises, and a sense that malicious code isn’t as scary anymore…. “I don’t think people outside the IT security profession realize the influence that profit has had on the development of malware and cyber crime overall,” he says.

“They see that the noise surrounding attacks has died down, and they mistake that as a sign that the threat is easing off… But what’s really happening is that instead of fighting 17-year-old graffiti artists, they’re now fighting sophisticated cat burglars.”

While enterprises’ overall feeling of security against malicious code remains high, there is a greater awareness of internal threats than there was in 2005, according to the study. While 44 percent of respondents said external attacks are their greatest concern, 56 percent said their worries about internal attacks are as great, if not greater” said Doug Drew, senior security consultant at BT.

“We have seen malicious code introduced by internal sources, either as a means of accessing data that the user isn’t authorized to access or in the form of sabotage, such as logic bombs,” says Drew. As deployment of malware becomes more profitable for criminals, many attackers may bribe or blackmail internal employees to help them distribute it from inside, he observes.

Educating users on security policies remains the most significant barrier to improving enterprises’ ability to protect against malware, cited by 56 percent of respondents, according to the study.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=151382&WT.svl=news1_5

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PCI Security Standards Council issues Payment Application Data Security Standard

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Companies that are approved as PA-QSAs will be recognized in a Council maintained and published list and can begin conducting PA-DSS assessments in accordance with the PA-DSS Security Audit Procedures.

All companies that were previously recognized as PA-QSAs under Visa PABP will need to enroll and re-validate as a Council PA-QSA.

http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=6025

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