Category: Trends

The Federal Information Security Management Act requires agencies to report cyber incidents, which are defined as acts that violate computer security or acceptable-use policies.

Mischel Kwon, US-CERT’s director, said that the numbers represent both an increase in malware and improvements in the capabilities of US-CERT and agencies to detect and report cyber incidents. “Both parts of the story are true: There is an increase in mal events, and there is an increase in capabilities in order to detect those mal events.” Kwon added that the numbers were a bit deceiving because the reports are based on manual reporting by agencies and that there are few security operations centers that monitor federal agency networks.

US-CERT, the operational arm of DHS’ National Cyber Security Division, works to analyze and reduce threat capabilities throughout government and industry, disseminate warning information and coordinate incident response activities. US-CERT also runs Einstein, a federal network-monitoring system. It is in the process of deploying a second version of the system with enhanced capabilities.

Kwon added that visibility across the federal network and incident reporting will improve as the second version of Einstein is deployed and agencies continue to reduce the number of connections they have to Internet under the Trusted Internet Connection project.

http://fcw.com/Articles/2009/02/17/CERT-cyber-incidents.aspx

The security firm surveyed over 800 chief information officers in the US, UK, China and India for its report.

McAfee security analyst Greg Day argued that many firms look to offshoring in order to reduce costs without thinking of the security implications of their intellectual property being stored or processed in other regions.

The research found that Brazil, China and India, for example, are spending more money on security than Germany, the UK, the US and Japan, but that some of the former countries have poor reputations for investigating security incidents, and may be lax at enforcing policies and regulations.

http://www.infomaticsonline.co.uk/vnunet/news/2235374/firms-lost-trillion-dollars-ip

Organizations are trying to get the most out of their spending and reduce the TCO of their IT investments – efficiency being the name of the game,” Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CTO at Finjan, said in a report summary.

“While 2008 saw IT security departments facing new challenges in protecting valuable business data against an ever-increasing wave of cybercrime attacks, 2009 is adding a further economic challenge to the mix.”

http://securitywatch.eweek.com/virus_and_spyware/new_report_predicts_increased_security_spend.html

The Gartner EXP CIO report “Meeting the Challenge: The 2009 CIO Agenda” represents the most comprehensive examination of business priorities and CIO strategies.

The CIOs surveyed represent more than $138 billion in corporate and public-sector IT spending, encompassing 1,527 enterprises across 48 countries and 30 industries.

“In 2009, executives face challenging global economic conditions that have not existed for more than 50 years,” said Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research for Gartner EXP. “This environment is reflected in IT budgets, priorities and strategies as one third of CIOs reported no change in their budget from 2008, while 46 percent reported a slight increase, and 21 percent reported a cut in IT budgets.” “All CIOs will face the need to restructure their budgets, cutting in some areas and investing in others, including those reporting no change in their overall spending level,” Mr. McDonald said. “Enterprises expect IT to contribute results in an uncertain economy. CIOs need to be decisive and resourceful in building an effective enterprise that can meet current and future challenges. Leading enterprises recognize the seriousness of economic conditions, but they are not paralyzed by them. Their leaders have confidence in their ability to use IT to achieve results.”

Senior enterprise executives recognize that IT’s contribution to economic performance extends beyond managing expenditures. They expect IT to play a role in reducing enterprise costs, not merely with cost cutting but by changing business processes, workforce practices and information use.

The business priority “improving business processes” has been the No. 1 business expectation of IT since its introduction to the CIO Agenda survey in 2005.

In 2009, more than 57 percent of CIOs reported this as one of their top five business expectations.

“It’s time for CIOs to develop business process improvement capabilities as part of the core of IT,” Mr. McDonald said. CIOs continue to invest in technologies beyond the infrastructure core.

* Invest in business intelligence applications and information consolidation in order to raise enterprise visibility and transparency, particularly around sales and operational performance. These investments coincide with the priority that CIOs are giving to legacy application modernization.

Top 10 Business and Technology Priorities in 2009>

Top 10 Business Priorities	Ranking	Top 10 Technology Priorities	Ranking
Business process improvement	1	Business intelligence	1
Reducing enterprise costs	2	Enterprise applications (ERP, CRM and others)	2
Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness	3	Servers and storage technologies (virtualization)	3
Attracting and retaining new customers	4	Legacy application modernization	4
Increasing the use of information/analytics	5	Collaboration technologies	5
Creating new products or services (innovation)	6	Networking, voice and data communications	6
Targeting customers and markets more effectively	7	Technical infrastructure	7
Managing change initiatives	8	Security technologies	8
Expanding current customer relationships	9	Service-oriented applications and architecture	9
Expanding into new markets and geographies	10	Document management	10

Source: Gartner EXP (January 2009)

http://security.itbusinessnet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=629658

The survey focused on determining the trends for allocating IT budgets in 2009 compared to 2008.

38% of all respondents stated that they do not expect a change in their 2009 IT budgets, while 34% indicated that they expect them to be Slightly smaller – reflecting the general declining trend in corporate budgets.

Organizations are trying to get the most out of their spending and reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of their IT investments – efficiency being the name of the game.

While 2008 saw IT security departments facing new challenges in protecting valuable business data against an ever-increasing wave of cybercrime attacks, 2009 is adding a further economic challenge to the mix.

http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=6915

Michael Balboni, deputy secretary for public safety in New York state, described “a huge threat out there” against everything from banking institutions to water systems and dams.

Henry said terrorist groups aim for an online 9/11, “inflicting the same kind of damage on our country, on all our countries, on all our networks, as they did in 2001 by flying planes into buildings.”

Russian hackers allegedly mounted huge assaults on internet networks in Estonia and Georgia last year, while Palestinian sympathisers have orchestrated attacks against hundreds of Israeli websites in the last few days.

Evan Kohlmann, an investigator with Global Terror Alert, based in Washington, said websites and social networking tools already allow underground Islamist leaders and militant organisations to recruit and communicate in safety worldwide.

http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/netsec/msg03055.html