Have security gadgets, will travelImage by Kensington, Anonabox, Yubikey The highly digitized and hyper-connected world that we live in today has heightened the security stakes for us all. But if work frequently takes you away from the home office, you have some particular security and privacy concerns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There is an old cliché that says a company's most valuable assets walk out the door at the end of the day. However, according to a recent security report, some other valuable assets are walking out the door as well, and they're not coming back.In a survey from Osterman Research, 69 percent of organizations polled say that they have suffered significant data or knowledge loss resulting from employees who took information resources with them when they left the business.Any form of data loss is a threat to a business, but the report notes that problems can arise both from employees actually taking data with them when they leave, and when departing employees have parked corporate information in locations like cloud storage services that are unknown or inaccessible to their former employer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At least one of the major reasons for the ongoing exponential increase in ransomware as a criminal business model could be summed up with the iconic line from the prison boss in 1967’s “Cool Hand Luke”: “What we got here is a failure to communicate.”That was a recurring theme from those on a “Ransomware Panel” Thursday at SOURCE Boston 2017, moderated by Paul Roberts, founder and editor in chief of The Security Ledger.The communication breakdown occurs at all levels, the panelists said, starting with victims.
■ MORE FROM SOURCE Boston: Cyber infrastructure: Too big to fail, and failing
Frank McLaughlin, a Boston Police detective, said when a business gets hit with ransomware, “the police are the last people they want to call, for obvious reasons. It becomes a public record.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. military, which continues its interest in bug bounty programs as a way to improve cybersecurity, is launching a new contest next month.Called “Hack the Air Force,” the new program will put certain of the branch’s Web sites up as targets for a set of international hackers who have been vetted by HackerOne, which is running the program.+More on Network World: IBM: Financial services industry bombarded by malware, security threats+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Look around the cybersecurity infrastructure at any enterprise organization, and here’s what you’ll see—dozens and dozens of cybersecurity tools from just as many vendors. Now this situation wasn’t planned; it just happened. Over the past 15 years, bad guys developed new cyber weapons to exploit IT vulnerabilities. And large organizations reacted to these new threats by purchasing and deploying new security controls and monitoring systems. This pattern continued over time, leading to today’s patchwork of security point tools. + Also on Network World: Is your company spending on the right security technologies? +
So, what’s the problem? Point tools aren’t really designed to talk with one another, leaving human beings to bridge the communications, intelligence and technology gaps between them. Furthermore, each individual tool requires training, deployment, configuration and ongoing operational support. More tools, more needs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The financial services industry is the target of a whopping 65% more targeted cyber-attacks than the average business, according to security watchers at IBM’s X Force.The number of financial services records breached skyrocketed 937% in 2016 to more than 200 million. Financial institutions were forced to defend against a 29 percent increase in the number of attacks from 2015, IBM stated.+More on Network World: IBM: Tax-related spam up 6,000% since Dec.; Darkweb tactics net billions+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Hajime botnet is nearly 300,000 strong, making it a latent threat nearly as powerful as the notorious Mirai botnet that devastated high-profile websites last fall, leading some to think the internet had been broken.Researchers at Kaspersky Lab lured devices infected with the Hajime worm to announce themselves to a Kaspersky honeypot, checked out whether they were actually infected and added them up. They came up with the number 297,499, says Igor Soumenkov, principal researcher at Kaspersky Lab.An earlier estimate by Symantec put the size at tens of thousands. Estimates of the number of infected devices in Mirai botnets have put it about 400,000, but the number of devices that might be infected with the Hajime worm is 1.5 million, says Dale Drew, the CSO of Level 3, which has been building a profile of behavioral classifiers to identify it so it can be blocked.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Verizon released its tenth annual breach report this morning, and cyberespionage and ransomware were the big gainers in 2016.Cyberspionage accounted for 21 percent of cases analyzed, up from 13 percent last year, and was the most common type of attack in the manufacturing, public sector, and education.In fact, in the manufacturing sector, cyberespionage accounted for 94 percent of all breaches. External actors were responsible for 93 percent of breaches, and, 91 percent of the time, the target was trade secrets.Meanwhile, the number of ransomware attacks doubled compared to the previous year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Malicious hackers have outsize reputations. They are über-geniuses who can guess any password in seconds, hack any system, and cause widespread havoc across multiple, unrelated networks with a single keystroke—or so Hollywood says. Those of us who fight hackers every day know the good guys are usually far smarter. Hackers simply have to be persistent.Each year, a few hackers do something truly new. But for the most part, hackers repeat the tried and true. It doesn’t take a supergenius to check for missing patches or craft a social engineering attack. Hacking by and large is tradework: Once you learn a few tricks and tools, the rest becomes routine. The truly inspired work is that of security defenders, those who successfully hack the hackers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Measuring ROIImage by ThinkstockWith the advent of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), WLAN network access to customers and visitors and virtualized systems, the demand for IP addresses has exploded. Small companies might have to manage more than 1,000 IP addresses and it is not unusual for larger companies to have 10,000 or more spread across many locations. Setting up and protecting the network infrastructure is a major challenge and needs to be even more sophisticated and dynamic than ever before.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Measuring ROIImage by ThinkstockWith the advent of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), WLAN network access to customers and visitors and virtualized systems, the demand for IP addresses has exploded. Small companies might have to manage more than 1,000 IP addresses and it is not unusual for larger companies to have 10,000 or more spread across many locations. Setting up and protecting the network infrastructure is a major challenge and needs to be even more sophisticated and dynamic than ever before.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The new release of the OWASP Top 10 list is out for public comment from the Open Web Application Security Project, and while most of it remains the same there are a couple of new additions, focusing on protections for web applications and APIs.To make room for the new items, a couple of older ones were either removed or merged into new items.The fact that the list hasn't changed much since its first release in 2003 is both good and bad, said Jeff Williams, CTO and co-founder at Contrast Security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The BlackBerry KeyOne, an Android-based smartphone with a hardware keyboard, will be available in the U.S. and Canada from May 31, the phone's maker said Thursday.TCL Communications, the Chinese company that acquired rights to produce BlackBerry-brand handsets, originally had said the phone would go on sale in April, so the delay may disappoint potential users. This could be a bad time to test the patience of potential buyers, as Samsung and LG are both heavily promoting their new flagship handsets, the S8 and G6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In announcing its Q1 earnings yesterday Juniper company executives were delighted about the company’s returns on its cloud computing directions.In the results conference call Juniper CEO Rami Rahim said cloud computing sales grew 25% year-over-year and noted that four of the company’s top 10 accounts were cloud-related. Specifically, the cloud vertical earned $331.6 million in the first quarter, over $264.8 million a year ago.“As the industry evolves, cloud architectures are no longer the exclusive domain of the cloud providers. Customers across all verticals are developing strategies for moving to cloud service delivery models and this aligns with our strategy to power the cloud transformation,” Rahim said [Seeking Alpha has a full transcript of the call here]. “The cloud is a massive paradigm shift that is reshaping all industries, and I'm excited about the opportunity we have in front of us.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The hackers spreading ransomware are getting greedier. In 2016, the average ransom demand to free computers hit with the infection rose to US$1,077, up from $294 the year before, according to security firm Symantec.“Attackers clearly think that there’s more to be squeezed from victims,” Symantec said in a Wednesday report.In addition, the security firm has been detecting more ransomware infection attempts. In 2016, the figure jumped by 36 percent from the year prior. That doesn’t bode well for the public. Ransomware is notorious for taking over computers, and essentially holding them hostage. To do so, the malicious coding encrypts all the data inside, and then demands a fee, usually in bitcoin, in exchange for releasing the machine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The mobile application that accompanies many Hyundai cars exposed sensitive information that could have allowed attackers to remotely locate, unlock, and start vehicles.The vulnerability was patched in the latest version of the mobile app released in March but was publicly disclosed on Tuesday. It is the latest in a string of flaws found over the past few years in the "smart" features added by vehicle manufacturers to their cars.The Hyundai issue was discovered by independent researchers William Hatzer and Arjun Kumar when analyzing the MyHyundai with Blue Link mobile app.Blue Link is a subscription-based technology that's available for many Hyundai car models released after 2012. It allows car owners to remotely locate their vehicles in case of theft, to remotely unlock them if they lose or misplace their keys, and even to remotely start or stop their engine when they're parked and locked.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Most credit card verification systems only verify whether the card is valid and not if the presenter is the authorized cardholder. MasterCard intends to address that with its newly introduced card with a built-in fingerprint sensor.This new MasterCard gives customers the option of using a single digit rather than a PIN. It’s a very impressive development, particularly since it works with existing chip readers.+ Also on Network World: Google’s Trust API: Bye-bye passwords, hello biometrics? +
The card gives new meaning to the title “cardholder” as the customer must physically hold the card during the transaction. There’s a fingerprint sensor on the face of the card that syphons enough power from the chip reader to read and validate a fingerprint. If dirt, sweat or other factors prevent validation, the transaction can be completed with a PIN.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The waves of cyberattacks that have rocked Saudi Arabia over the past few months are linked to the earlier Shamoon attacks. However, the initial 2012 attack was the work of a single group, whereas the latest attacks have been carried out by different groups of varying skills and expertise, all following instructions provided by one malicious actor, McAfee researchers have found.Researchers at McAfee Strategic Intelligence believe the 2012 Shamoon attacks against Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil company Saudi Aramco and Qatari natural gas company RasGas, the attacks last November against Saudi organizations, and these latest attacks are all the work of hacker groups supported and coordinated by a single actor, and not the efforts of multiple gangs operating independently, said McAfee principal engineer Christiaan Beek and McAfee chief scientist Raj Samani. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nothing beats hearing from your peers about which IT security products have been successful in the enterprise. IT Central Station, which collects reviews from verified enterprise IT product users, has compiled a report that identifies 25 top-rated products in security categories such as cloud security, firewalls, security information and event management (SIEM), application security and internet of things (IoT) security.IT Central Station selected the product leaders in each security category. The report uses a scoring methodology based on a combination of buyer interest, the number of reviews (at least 10), and the average rating in those reviews.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
With mid-market companies feeling an increasing need to devote time and resources to network security, the security-as-a-service model is gaining traction, according to new research released yesterday by 451 Research."The security challenge for mid-tier businesses is multi-dimensional," Daniel Cummins, analyst at 451 Research, said in a statement. "For these businesses, everything seems to be increasing — attack frequency, compliance requirements, complexity, costs and the number of security products that need to be managed. Cloud-based security-as-a-service offers potentially significant advantages in terms of simplicity and access to security that may prove to be less complex and expensive than traditional approaches."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here