Author: admini

http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=909

Posted on by admini

The report quite rightly concluded that it is not a lack of available technology that is responsible for those respondents not having a disaster recovery plan in place, but that in fact the IT industry hasn’t informed the market on the solutions available. The good news is that this lack of knowledge on the part of end-users presents a big opportunity to resellers to educate the luggards and reap the rewards.

With compliance and Sarbanes Oxley firmly lodged in the conciousness of IT Managers throughout the UK and Meta Group reporting that estimated demand for storage products has risen steadily during the past 12 to 18 months, the market is obviously growing.

There needs to be a simple solution offered by vendors to their channel partners that saves them money by minimising the time needed for configuration and pricing, while ensuring complete accuracy in their proposals for customers.

Two of the main reasons for companies deciding not to implement SANs were the cost of the hardware and the cost of implementation. The main reason, however, was the lack of a perceived business benefit for installing a SAN, an indication that despite the growth in demand for storage, the opportunity-cost is not being entirely explained, or entirely understood.

http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=909

Read more

Symantec, Microsoft Plant Flags in Data Protection

Posted on by admini

Symantec officials aren’t talking about the software ahead of the event. But the company, which acquired Backup Exec through its purchase of Veritas earlier this year, said on its Web site the new product will “deliver the industry’s first and only Web-based end user file recovery functionality.” Symantec, which has been preaching a fusion of security and storage since consummating the $10.5 billion Veritas deal, said a feature in the product called Backup Exec Retrieve lets users order up file restoration through a Web browser. “Whenever a change is made to a file, that change is captured, and it is protected,” Symantec said on its site. “But not only is the data protected, multiple versions of files are captured and available for recovery or retrieval. Backup Exec “Panther” beta only captures granular — or block-level — changes, not the whole file.”

This granularity is what is making CDP such a hot technology: At a time when the government has cracked down on corporations to retain records and recall them on the fly in the case of litigation, tools like CDP prove useful.

Microsoft has its own unique vision for fine backup, though it hesitates to call its new Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) a CDP solution. DPM, which runs on top of a Windows Server 2003, leverages Microsoft’s point-in-time software, Volume Shadow Copy Services Writer SDK 1.0, by modeling how data managers can restore replicas. Ben Matheson, group product manager of DPM for Microsoft, has said DMP is more of a hybrid of disk backup because it only recovers from snapshots. Customers will be able to license DPM for $950 in a package that includes one DPM server license and three management licenses, the company said in July.

Pund-IT Research analyst Charles King said he will reserve judgment about whether Symantec’s of Microsoft’s products are true CDP, or just automated snapshot applications, after next week’s launches. “I think the Microsoft and Veritas [Symantec] announcements next week will be two of the signature announcements this fall,” King said.

http://internetnews.com/storage/article.php/3550941

Read more

Report: Security Slip-Ups Don’t Ding Stock Prices For Long

Posted on by admini

To answer those questions, Belva charted stock prices before and after data losses at the likes of Polo Ralph Lauren, UPS, Choicepoint, Bank of America, and Citigroup; took into account other news during those time spans that likely affected the price; and also looked at the long range trends in each company’s stock.

“[Stock prices are] the only publicly visible measure of confidence in a corporate institution,” said Belva. Most security problems don’t effect the company’s stock price. Although prices may dip temporarily on bad news of a data breach, the price rebounds quickly. If Citigroup and UPS lost 3.9 million customer records every week and Bank of America’s employees were found to consistently sell customer information illegally, we would most likely change our minds about where we do business,” said Belva in his paper.

In the Citigroup/UPS incident, in which the latter lost a shipment of tapes containing nearly 4 million current and former accounts, Belva found that Citigroup’s stock price fell a puny .02 percent the day the financial firm put out a press release on the lost tapes, but that the stock actually rose 0.27 percent when the story made the media four days later.

UPS’ stock, meanwhile, climbed 0.22 percent the day after the story made the rounds.

Only when a data loss impacts the core business of a company — such as when Choicepoint admitted to selling data to fraudsters, or when third-party credit card processor CardSystems was hacked, resulting in the exposure of nearly 40 million cards — does the stock, and thus the company, take a hammering, Belva said. In Choicepoint’s case, its stock price fell 3.1 percent on the day the breach was reported, and then continued to fall.

“Based on the known cases, there is a good chance that the stock will decline in the short term and rebound soon after. In effect, it may be possible to make money off the publicly reported breach.

http://www.techweb.com/wire/security/171200329

Read more

Security Becomes Financial Watchword

Posted on by admini

The data-security problem reached a new level in June when it was disclosed that a security breach at payment processor CardSystems Solutions Inc. had led to the exposure of 40 million card accounts.

Citigroup has said it would encrypt all tapes bound for transit, while Bank of America improved its tape-tracking procedures and launched a system intended to thwart phishing.

“A day doesn’t go by where information security isn’t front and center,” says Katherine Busser, CIO of the U.S. card division at Capital One Financial Corp.

Banks, insurance companies, and investment firms will spend $362 billion worldwide this year on IT, according to research firm TowerGroup. Other IT priorities in financial services are profitability management and improving revenue streams using technology, according to research firm Financial Insights.

http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=JXRN20RYC05RQQSNDBECKH0CJUMEKJVN?articleID=170703276

Read more

Build Your Own Security Operations Center

Posted on by admini

The tasks the security operations center handles can range from typical event management and incident response to account administration, investigations and forensics. Some companies choose to outsource their SOCs, because they want the expertise and 24-hour monitoring of a dedicated security team without staffing and building a SOC. For many, it makes sense to maintain an internal SOC, especially when a NOC already exists.

Building a separate infrastructure is expensive and probably not worth the effort. In many cases, the data center is a good fit, because it already has manned guard stations, cameras, security clearance and sign-in/sign out requirements and other physical security controls. Common and successful approaches to this end include having highly restrictive firewall policies for the SOC and placing an IDS–or better yet, an IPS–with restrictive policies inline between the SOC and the rest of the company network.

If remote access to the SOC is needed from within the company network, require a VPN connection. An additional network connection will give your SOC personnel an outsider’s view of your network. This link could be a T1 line or even an inexpensive DSL connection, preferably from an ISP other than the one providing your primary Internet connections.

Undoubtedly, you’ll need a wireless network in the SOC so workers can roam between conference rooms and offices. One possible solution is to have wireless users access the SOC network over a VPN requiring two-factor authentication.

http://www.secureenterprisemag.com/howtos/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=166400611

Read more

US banks lose $50bn to phantom fraudsters

Posted on by admini

Avivah Litan, research director at Gartner, explained that because US banks are so keen to recruit new customers they will open up accounts on the basis of identification from only a pay-as-you-go mobile phone bill (a type of account that is even easier to open) without checks on the validity of supplied social security numbers.

Once a bank account is open crooks will pay bills religiously, eventually earning enough trust to obtain credit cards with higher and higher limits. After around 18 months fraudsters will obtain cash advances on these cards and disappear, a process know as busting out. Losses of around $50K are typical, according to Litan. Banks will pursue these funds and call in collection agencies but in the end the majority will write-off the debt without understanding the root cause of the fraudulent loss.

Litan said that banks in Britain were far better at sharing information and working with each other to minimise exposure to this kind of fraud. The incentive to sign up new customers is great in Europe but in the US it’s even more pronounced because banks send out 1,937 pieces of marketing information for every new sign-up.

“The goal is getting new customers and banks are not that hungry about eating into fraud,” she said.

Litan made his comments during a presentation at the Gartner IT Security Summit in London.

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11320

Read more