Category: Trends

Corporate security is more of a strategic issue than a technological battle, and chief security officers should be treated as trusted experts by boards, delegates at the Compsec 2003 were told last week.

Outsourcing, email management and financial or regulatory pressures such as Basel II in Europe and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US have driven this approach, the security conference heard.

“The chief security officer should now be positioned as a trusted advisor to the business, moving away from operational delivery towards understanding and managing risk,” said Phillip Gregory, head of UK security at financal services firm Norwich Union.

Security is less about technology and more about establishing consistency in the processes and procedures that the technology supports, he added.

Identify issues early, raise awareness of your requirement and become part of the process,” he said.

Ian Angell, information systems professor at the London School of Economics, repeated warnings to spend more time on due process and less on technology as a panacea.

However, success and failure will be determined by unique social, political, organisational, and particularly personal factors, not just the functional.”

More info: [url=http://www.vnunet.com/News/1147007]http://www.vnunet.com/News/1147007[/url]

“In future, networks will need automatic systems that will be able to respond to virus attacks within seconds to prevent serious damage”, he told customers and partners of Cisco Systems and Internet Solutions in Bryanston yesterday.

Van Gend says there is a very high level of security awareness in South Africa, but like the rest of the world, many decision makers do not realise the scale of the risk.

He emphasises the importance of protecting networks against the unknown and says Cisco has found that the most effective way of doing that is by using host based intrusion detection, “which is proactive rather than being merely reactive like most other security systems.”

“Although the virus is present on the network, host-based intrusion detection as implemented by Cisco means that viruses can be prevented from executing until the necessary patches can be applied in a controlled and more cost effective way.”

More info: [url=http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/computing/2003/0310311051.asp?A=SEC&S=Security&O=FPT]http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/computing/2003/0310311051.asp?A=SEC&S=Security&O=FPT[/url]

Gartner says almost 70 percent of companies view security as a barrier to Web services deployment.

To assess the state of XML security today as it pertains not only to Web services but also to the latest Office software, Security Strategies spoke with John Lilly, the chief technology officer of Reactivity, which just announced the latest generation of its XML firewall.

And though customers are using them, as you know, in security, people don’t like to talk about what they’re doing.

The cost reductions and revenue enablement are so steep that some companies are going in without any security.

The good news is that because Microsoft moved to a mostly open standard for XML documents, you can be a bit more proactive about pulling those documents apart and seeing if there’s anything malicious or not.

Also Microsoft’s use of XML for sharing, collaboration, and updates will create more accidental XML traffic—the organization doesn’t necessarily know it’s there until they look.

More info: [url=http://www.esj.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=748]http://www.esj.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=748[/url]

Part of the problem is one of definition – there are broadly different definitions as to what actually constitutes ‘cyberterrorism’. There are a number of well-accepted definitions which share common similarities and are outlined below.
But increasingly, there are a number of loose definitions which are promulgated to encourage the purchase of particular computer security products or services or to generate interest in a story by the media. The purpose of this article is to present a legitimate definition of ‘cyberterrorism’ and identify some common misuses of the term.
If organizations are taking steps to protect themselves from ordinary cyber attacks of the type that are reported in the media and the 2003 Australian Computer Crime and Security Survey, then they will be well placed to protecting against all forms of cyber attack. Organizations and businesses should therefore ensure they focus on managing all threats – deliberate, accidental or natural – logical or physical – and implement appropriate security measures to manage that risk.
More info: [url=http://www.auscert.org.au/render.html?it=3552]http://www.auscert.org.au/render.html?it=3552[/url]

As an annoying and inconvenient cost;
As a form of risk management;
And as a strategic enabler.

It’s a fact of life that security professionals may never get the budgets they want to make their organizations secure. But educating management about the value of security will go a long way toward getting the resources they need. Many security pros said getting money to secure a company is an uphill battle — but it used to be worse. Getting management to understand the value of security also means educating them about the many facets of it, including end-user involvement.
More info: [url=http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci933459,00.html ]http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci933459,00.html [/url]