Author: admini

When it comes to security, ignorance is bliss at the top

Posted on by admini

Latest research reveals the majority of IT bosses are confident about their companies’ security yet when drilling down through the findings we find a picture of disarray as companies lose track of laptops, remote access, the latest threats and the risk of employee wrong-doing.

According to findings released today, 99 percent of respondents said they are protected from threats while only three percent of European IT bosses believe they will never be 100 percent secure.

Mark Murtagh, European technical director at Websense — a provider of Web filtering and Internet securtity services which commissioned the research — said it paints a worrying picture for companies.

Eight percent of companies have no additional security in place beyond desktop antivirus and a firewall and many are being slow to react to the latest threats. Despite it being an issue which has hit the headlines in a big way over the past 12 months spyware is still getting an easy ride, with 35 percent of companies having no protection of any kind in place. And the ways in which spyware can get onto a machine continue to thrive with 56 percent of firms letting staff install and use peer-to-peer software — a common source of malicious code — and 43 percent of firms doing nothing to limit employee Web-surfing.

Furthermore 62 percent of companies are doing nothing to limit staff access to phishing sites.

And if staff decide to turn on their company and steal data or access areas of the network they shouldn’t, only 40 percent are equipped to identify them. More than two-thirds of UK IT bosses (68 percent) think laptops, which are taken home or used remotely and then plugged back into the network, pose a security risk and yet only a quarter (26 percent) are really doing anything about it. Only 21 percent believe it is the responsibility of the IT department while six percent said they don’t know who is responsible.

While 40 percent of respondents claim to audit PCs every three to six months, Murtagh believes this may amount to little more than ‘head count’ — “how many have we got and what operating system are they running?”. “Companies need to seriously audit PCs and undertake full risk assessment. I’d like to think if we did this survey again in six months I’d have some cause for optimism but there will still be a large number of companies who have failed to get a grip on their Internet security,” said Murtagh.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39191336,00.htm

Read more

No Unfair Advantage In Early Patches, Says Microsoft

Posted on by admini

SUVP was disclosed by the Wall Street Journal; until then, the year-old program had been a closely-guarded secret. It’s so secret, in fact, that a search on Microsoft’s Web site for “SUVP” comes up empty.

Microsoft said that SUVP’s testing is beneficial to everyone, since “the end result is high-quality update for customers.”

The spokesperson denied that the Air Force, or any other organization or company participating in SUVP — the Air Force is the only participant that’s been named so far — gets a jump when it comes to patches. “The program is not designed to give the Air Force or any customer who participates in SUVP, a competitive advantage, and the service does not receive mission-critical patches before any other customer.”

http://www.techweb.com/wire/security/159900380

Read more

Australian Call centres: no VoIP for us, please

Posted on by admini

In recent months the Australian market has seen the release of several new players in the VoIP space and analyst predictions to the effect that 2005 will be the year that VoIP takes off in a big way.

There has even been a public discussion paper released by the Australian Communication Authority on regulation of the potentially disruptive new technology, and various public responses from telecommunications providers. A study commissioned by contact centre software provider Concerto showed that those in charge of contact centres were still only tentatively appraising the technology.

The managers came from a broad range of industry segments and took part in the research in January and February of this year. Of those 100, only 2 percent listed VoIP technology as being next on their shopping lists for their call centres, and only 6 percent said that VoIP was the technology that had made the most impact on improving productivity in their call centre over the past 12 months.

In contrast to the lack of interest in VoIP technology, 9 percent of respondents said they would soon be purchasing speech recognition software for their call centres, although only 1 percent said speech recognition technology had had the most impact on productivity in their contact centre in the past 12 months.

“Call centres are carefully evaluating the business benefits that will drive investment in VoIP and converged technologies,” said Concerto Australia and New Zealand general manager Gerry Tucker.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/0,2000061791,39184629,00.htm

Read more

Desktop Anti-Spyware Doesn’t Cut It, Says Survey

Posted on by admini

Eight-four percent of those surveyed said that the spyware problem is worse, or at best the same, as it was three months ago.

Although one would expect such results from a poll done by a vendor that sells gateway, not end-point, anti-spyware products, Gartner research director Avivah Litan seconded Blue Coat’s motion that today’s desktop defenses are not the ultimate solution for the spyware dilemma. “The lack of effectiveness comes from the fact that many [programs] are signature based,” she said, referring to the one-one-one digital fingerprints that anti-spyware, like their anti-virus cousins, must create to detect and then delete each new instance of spyware.

(It’s common, for instance, that one desktop anti-spyware product misses some spyware that rivals catch, and vice versa, the root of the advice by many experts to use multiple anti-spyware solutions.)

In fact, about one out of every eight enterprise IT managers polled said that they re-image all their spyware-infected desktops as a matter of course.

http://www.techweb.com/wire/security/159402774

Read more

Can a Virus Hitch a Ride in Your Car?

Posted on by admini

Could you find yourself at the wheel of two tons of rolling steel that has malevolent code coursing through its electronic veins? That frightening prospect has had Internet message boards buzzing this year, amid rumors that a virus had infected Lexus cars and S.U.V.’s.

The virus supposedly entered the cars over the Bluetooth wireless link that lets drivers use their cellphones to carry on hands-free conversations through the cars’ microphones and speakers. A handful of real if fairly benign cellphone viruses have already been observed, in antivirus industry parlance, “in the wild.” Still, a virus in a cellphone might muck up an address book or, at worst, quietly dial Vanuatu during peak hours.

But malicious code in cars, which rely on computers for functions as benign as seat adjustment and as crucial as antiskid systems that seize control of the brakes and throttle to prevent a crash, could do far more harm.

The Lexus tale, based on murky reporting and a speculative statement by Kaspersky Labs, a Moscow antivirus company, seems to have been unfounded. “Lexus and its parent companies, Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. and Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan, have investigated this rumor,” the carmaker said in a statement last month, “and have determined it to be without foundation.”

But the question lingers: Could a car be infected by a virus passed along from, say, your cellphone or hand-held computer?

“Right now this is a lot of hype rather than reality, the idea that cars could be turning against us,” said Thilo Koslowski, a vice president and lead analyst for auto-based information and communication technologies at Gartner G2, a technology research firm.

First, vehicles are increasingly controlled by electronics – to the point that even the simple mechanical link between the gas pedal and engine throttle is giving way to “drive by wire” systems.

Second, more data is being exchanged with outside sources, including cellphones and real-time traffic reports.

Finally, the interlinking of car electronics opens up the possibility that automotive worms could burrow into a memory storage area in ways that engineers never imagined.

Less obvious are the advantages of having the components communicate: an antiskid system, designed to help keep a car from spinning out of control, links sensors in the steering, brakes and throttle, and can effectively seize control from the driver.

http://www.techweb.com/wire/security/159400873

Read more