Author: admini

Top Email Concerns: Corporate Policies and Security

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A recent report, commissioned by ProofPoint, summarizes the company’s survey of 300 decision makers at large businesses, highlights the fact that businesses that protecting against leaks of proprietary information via email and ensuring compliance with corporate policies are the top email concerns among organizations.

The survey revealed that more than 33 percent of companies had email leak of confidential information, 88 percent of companies said they have acceptable user policies for email, 18 percent report that they have deploy technologies to enforce corporate policies, 25 percent of companies deployed monitoring software for web mail traffic and 70 percent said that they are concerned about web-based email systems and a conduit for the exposure of confidential information.

http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=740

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Windows 2000 moves into Extended Support after June 30th

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First, support for both IE 5.01 SP3 and IE 6 SP1 on Windows 2000 SP3 will expire.
Second, Windows 2000 SP4 moves from mainstream to extended support.

The key difference between mainstream support and extended support which he thinks is most relevant to this audience is this quote from the lifecycle site: “Microsoft will not accept requests for warranty support, design changes, or new features during the Extended support phase.”

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/05/27/422721.aspx

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Compliance: Aligning IT and strategic goals

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Luckily for financial services, one of the most heavily regulated industries, IT vendors are providing a competitive array of compliance solutions.

IT’s role in compliance is growing because regulation increasingly requires that business activities be monitored, audited, and scrutinised; this translates to the storage and retention of vast amounts of data — and only technology can handle that load. “The nature of IT’s role in compliance varies widely among companies, but it’s clear that growing regulatory requirements are giving IT specialists in companies a lot more work and bringing them into contact with different corporate departments,” says Nigel Holloway, director of executive services for the Americas at the Economist Intelligence Unit in New York.

However, just because technology can assist with compliance, does not mean that it comes cheap. And this is making for a further imperative: spending on compliance must be linked to the investment in wider business goals. For many, this is likely to be the only way they can justify the expenditure compliance necessitates.

According to the EIU, over half of the executives they spoke to said that the annual expenditure in this area of IT is expanding by over 10 percent a year.

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020487,39200378,00.htm

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683 mln e-mail users worlwide, 130 bln e-mails sent daily

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According to the study, there are about 683 million email users worldwide, with nearly 1.2 billion active email accounts.

In regards to instant messaging (IM), the study shows strong growth in both corporate and consumer IM use. The IM Management segment of the market, which develops products to manage, archive and secure IM systems is poised for particularly strong growth, growing from $39 million in 2005 to $118 million in 2009.

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=85246

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Fraud Bill tidies English law and targets phishing

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At present there is no one general fraud law in English law, but an untidy mess of eight specific statutory crimes (such as ‘obtaining property by deception’) and a vague common law offence of “conspiracy to defraud”. This can make it difficult for prosecutors to choose an offence to fit a particular crime of dishonesty. Nor do the current laws deal effectively with the growing problem of phishing — which occurs when a fraudster sends an e-mail with a link to a fraudulent web site where users are asked to provide personal account information.

In January alone, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the number of phishing attacks jumped 42% from those reported in December. So the Government is determined to clarify the ambiguities and yesterday published its new Fraud Bill, which creates a new general offence of fraud.

While the existing laws do not make phishing legal in England and Wales, they could make a prosecution more challenging than it should be. Security provider MessageLabs welcomed the new law, but the company’s Chief Information Security Analyst, Paul Wood, warned that the laws do not remove the need for technical solutions.

The new offence of fraud, which will carry a maximum sentence of 10 years, can be committed in three ways: By false representation. By failing to disclose information and By abuse of position.

Scotland does have a common law crime of fraud, committed when someone achieves a practical result by a false pretence.

http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=fraudbilltidiesen1117197431&area=news

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Cisco warns over DNS glitch

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The bug, involving flaws in the processing of maliciously crafted DNS (Domain Name System) packets, also affects some of Cisco’s content networking and secure router products. The vulnerability is limited to Cisco products running DNS clients, rather than DNS Server functions, and creates a means for remote attackers to crash vulnerable devices, Cisco warns.

Cisco has made a series of free software upgrades available to address the vulnerability.

The scope of the vulnerability – and the number of products affected – promises to create a lot of work in Cisco shops, so users are advised to scope out remedial work sooner rather than later.

More technical details (but not a list of affected vendors) can be found in a UK government UNIRAS alert here: http://www.niscc.gov.uk/niscc/docs/al-20050524-00433.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/26/cisco_dns_glitch/

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