http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/354?ref=rss
The guide can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/security/guide.mspx
Author: admini
U.K. outlaws denial-of-service attacks
Among the provisions of the Police and Justice Bill 2006, which gained Royal Assent on Wednesday, is a clause that makes it an offense to impair the operation of any computer system.
http://sympatico-msn-ca.com.com/UK+outlaws+denial-of-service+attacks/2100-7348_3-6134472.html?part=sympatico-msn-ca&tag=feed_2570&subj=ns_6134472
Russia Moves for Tougher IP Protections
The office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has frequently criticized Russia for not effectively protecting or enforcing intellectual property rights (IPR).
“We have an agreement in principle and are finalizing the details,” U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said in a statement.
The agreement calls for Russia to take specific actions and to enact laws by specific dates to combat Internet piracy and optical disk piracy. Under the terms of the agreement, Russia will permit a one-time notification for multiple products and set specific ground rules for granting licenses for products that require an import license.
The bilateral deal is critical to Russia’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
According to the USTR, the Bush administration has consulted closely with Congress, particularly with members and staff of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the House and Senate Agriculture Committees and the IPR Caucus.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3643351
NIST publishes: Information Security Handbook: A Guide for Managers
This Information Security Handbook provides a broad overview of information security program elements to assist managers in understanding how to establish and implement an information security program.
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-100/sp800-100.pdf
Phishing is becoming a higher value illegal activity for hackers
According to Gartner analyst Avivah Litan, this is happening because scammers are identifying higher-income targets, moving their phishing sites more frequently and switching up the types of business they try to impersonate.
Victims click on links they receive in the body of e-mails — and, increasingly, in instant messages — from sites purporting to be legitimate businesses like financial institutions, e-commerce and auction sites.
Approximately 109 million U.S. adults have received phishing e-mail attacks, up from 57 million in 2004, according to Gartner. Total loses from phishing attacks have risen to $2.8 billion in 2006, twice the amount lost in 2004.
According to the survey, conducted by Gartner analysts in August of this year, adults earning more than $100,000 per year are attacked more often than those making less.
According to Litan, cyber criminals have done a better job of identifying high-income individuals. They sell each other credit card numbers in online chat rooms, and can identify credit cards with higher spending limits by the first six digits on the card.
http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/3642971
Defending the data will be a focus for 2007
Most of the “blocking and tackling” that was needed to handle network threats has, to a large extent, already been accomplished via technologies such as firewalls and intrusion-detection and -prevention systems, said Mark Burnett, director of IT security and compliance at Gaylord Entertainment Co. in Nashville. “We are layering technology controls to make sure we can identify where the information is passing across our network” and protect it. The overall driving force behind our [security] program is reputation management. Any one incident could ruin all that work.”
Also driving the focus are regulations that Gaylord is required to comply with, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standard, which is mandated by the major credit card companies, he said. Ann Garrett, the chief information security officer at the North Carolina state office of information technology in Raleigh, said that a new state law governing the use of personally identifiable information has elevated the need for security controls at the data level.
High-profile breaches such as the one at the Department of Veterans Affairs earlier this year have resulted in an intense scrutiny of data security practices government-wide said Patrick Howard, chief information security officer, at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=security&articleId=9004914