Security Beats Holding Down Costs In IT Concerns

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A survey earlier this year of 933 U.S. and Canadian companies found that more than three quarters of the respondents rated security as an “extremely or very significant” concern or IT challenge for their organizations, International Data Corp. said.

“Our latest survey findings indicate that IT spending on security and business continuity has increased at 59 percent of organizations in the last 12 months,” IDC analyst Lucie Draper said in a statement. We believe that despite the economic environment, and in some cases because of the geopolitical environment, the prospects for vendors of security technologies are good.”

Other findings included that corporate compliance and government regulations related to security and privacy remained of particular concern to the banking and the healthcare services industries.

http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20040726S0010

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2004: A dreadful half-year for malware

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So far this year, 31 viruses have been classed as a medium risk or higher, compared to 20 in the whole of 2003.

The main factor behind this rise is the battle between the authors of the Bagle and Netsky viruses, who each launched a volley of malicious code containing insults about their rivals.

Today, there are still three variants of both Bagle and Netsky that McAfee classes as a medium threat.

An average of 50 new pieces of malware have been released on the Internet each day this year, according to the company, and McAfee is forecasting that by the end of 2004 another 18,000 new pieces of malware will have been created.

“The rise in viruses, worms, Trojans and unwanted programs such as spyware, hacking tools and password stealers in the first half of 2004 has already surpassed what we saw throughout all of 2003, bringing us very close to the 100-thousandth mark for identified threats,” said Vincent Gullotto, vice president of McAfee AVERT, the company’s antivirus emergency response team.

The forecast for the rest of 2004 and beyond is not heartening. McAfee expects that spyware and adware will become more of a problem, especially spam emails that deposit spyware on a user’s PC after they are opened.

Phishing attacks, in which organised criminals attempt to fool people into disclosing their banking details by creating a fake Web site are also predicted to rise – as many users are still blind to the danger of clicking on attachments from unknown sources, according to McAfee.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39161677,00.htm

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Six software firewalls reviewed and rated

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In this report, they asked six top vendors to provide products that deliver firewall protection to the enterprise network.

The hardware alternatives offer one distinct advantage as these appliances come complete with processor, memory and embedded operating system which provides intrusion detection and prevention straight from the box.

A key feature in four of the products was the inclusion of workstations that allowed policies to be managed from the desktop. Virtually all hardware firewalls use stateful inspection which intercepts packets at the network layer, then analyses the header and contents of each packet to determine its communication state, as well as the source and destination addresses. Although basic packet filtering offers higher performance, security is reduced as most filtering mechanisms only examine packets at the network layer and are unable to determine what application they are bound for. Only the Zone Labs’ firewall product implements stateful packet inspection – a feature drawn from its popular personal firewall software.

To test installation, configuration, deployment and reporting of the central management consoles of each product we used a Pentium III 733-equipped system with 256Mb of memory and running Windows 2000 Server, while client duties were handed out to a variety of workstations running Windows 98 SE, ME and 2000 Professional.

Review: http://www.whatpc.co.uk/products/software/1133254

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Cisco Fortifies WLAN Security

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While Cisco is not the first wireless LAN provider to embrace Advanced Encryption Standard, its support will bring peace of mind to many IT managers who have standardized on the leading enterprise WLAN provider’s technology—especially those required to offer government-caliber security for their wireless networks.

By year’s end, Cisco will introduce “Kodiak,” an 802.11a radio module for the popular Aironet AP1200 access point, according to sources familiar with the San Jose, Calif., company’s plans. Kodiak supports the IEEE 802.11i security protocol, ratified last month, which is based largely on AES. There will be two versions of the module, one with an integrated antenna and one with connectors for remote antennas, the sources said.

Cisco also will introduce software that supports AES for Kodiak and for its 802.11g AP1100 and AP1200 access points. AES is a federally approved encryption standard based on 128-bit keys generated by the Rijndael algorithm, resulting in stronger encryption than either TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) or the more common WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). AES can be difficult to implement on an existing WLAN, especially for campuses with hundreds of access points.

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Worried firms consider email boycott

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Responding to an email security survey carried out by MessageLabs a further 40 per cent said they feel ‘worried’ by the current email security threat to their business, with only 29 per cent feeling ‘optimistic’. The survey shows that few (15 per cent) think email will remain the same application over the next decade, while two thirds think it will merge with other messaging applications, such as wireless and instant messaging. But only 14 per cent of respondents think it will become completely obsolete.

Over 20 per cent of firms responding to the research indicated that online fraud such as phishing and identity theft will be the greatest threat.

Viruses achieved a similar rating (21 per cent).

The leakage of confidential or sensitive information was rated by 18 per cent as the main issue, with 15 per cent stating that it would be the potential for industrial espionage. The survey reveals continued concern over levels of spam, with over 40 per cent of respondents predicting that levels of junk email will more than double over the next 10 years, and a further 24 per cent expecting it to rise by more than 50 per cent. Only four per cent think it will be non-existent.

Mark Sunner, chief technology officer at MessageLabs, said in a statement: “These results clearly show that concern about email security continues to run high, to the extent that if the situation does not improve the status of email will be under threat. “The convergence of the various email attack methods has led to a more damaging and complex breed of email security threat, meaning that everyone’s favourite ‘killer app’ is also capable of mortal damage to the business.”

http://www.vnunet.com/news/1156684

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Security tops network wish list

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A poll of 254 senior executives by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that security has replaced network reliability and availability as the most critical network attribute. But while businesses worry about security, the vast majority of executives want to further open up their networks to partners, customers and mobile workers. This creates friction between general management and IT executives, who point out that opening up the network can increase vulnerability.

More than 80 per cent of all the executives surveyed believe that their goals of giving remote workers access to corporate networks and improving the availability of customer data for employees will leave their firms vulnerable to security threats.

Security spending itself is likely to shift focus over the next few years, according to the study, moving from layers of perimeter protection and intrusion detection to better tools aimed at preventing attacks.

The report also noted that the spiralling threat of cyber-attacks and increased vulnerabilities are pushing up costs, causing network security spending to outpace overall IT expenditure.

On average, the firms surveyed devoted nine per cent of the IT budget to network security in 2002. This figure rose to 11 per cent last year and is expected to reach 13 per cent this year.

“In a global networked economy of internet connectivity and interoperability, isolation leads to irrelevance for enterprises that can’t protect their networks,” said Hossein Eslambolchi, president of AT&T global networking technology services, which sponsored the survey, in a statement. Increasingly, the chief executive is taking ownership of network security policy in some companies, the report found, while in others a relatively new role, that of chief security officer, is emerging.

http://www.computing.co.uk/news/1156671

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