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Category Archives for "Networking"

Five steps to optimize your firewall configuration

Firewalls are an essential part of network security, yet Gartner says 95% of all firewall breaches are caused by misconfiguration. In my work I come across many firewall configuration mistakes, most of which are easily avoidable. Here are five simple steps that can help you optimize your settings:

* Set specific policy configurations with minimum privilege. Firewalls are often installed with broad filtering policies, allowing traffic from any source to any destination. This is because the Network Operations team doesn’t know exactly what is needed so start with this broad rule and then work backwards. However, the reality is that, due to time pressures or simply not regarding it as a priority, they never get round to defining the firewall policies, leaving your network in this perpetually exposed state.

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Court: FTC can take action on corporate data breaches

The US Court of Appeals has ruled that the FTC mandate to protect consumers against fraudulent, deceptive and unfair business practices extends to oversight of corporate cybersecurity efforts -- and lapses. But security experts are split about whether the decision will help improve enterprise security. "It is not only appropriate, but critical, that the FTC has the ability to take action on behalf of consumers when companies fail to take reasonable steps to secure sensitive consumer information," said Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez in a statement. Specifically, last week's decision allowed the FTC to take action against Wyndham Hotels and Resorts for failing to reasonably protect consumers' personal information between 2008 and 2010, when hackers broke in three times and stole more than 600,000 bank card numbers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Intel promises $50M for quantum computing research

A fully functioning quantum computer is still twelve years off, according to Intel, but the company is already plowing research funding into the field.On Thursday, Intel promised to fund QuTech, a research unit at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, to the tune of US$50 million over 10 years, and to provide additional staff and equipment to support its work.QuTech hopes the partnership will allow it to combine its theoretical work on quantum computing with Intel's manufacturing expertise to produce quantum computing devices on a larger scale.Quantum computers are composed of qubits that can take on multiple values simultaneously, unlike the bits stored and processed in traditional computers, which are either 0s or 1s. This multiplicity of values makes quantum computing, at least in theory, highly useful for parallel computing problems such as financial analysis, molecular modelling or decryption.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Feds advance open data roadmap despite challenges

Federal authorities are marching ahead with a new framework for opening government data, a process that aims to consolidate department and agency datasets into a standardized format and make them accessible for the public.Christina Ho, deputy assistant secretary for accounting policy and financial transparency at the Treasury Department, recently provided an update on the rollout of the 2014 DATA Act, a sweeping bill that for the first time mandates a holistic system for making government spending data transparent and freely available.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung’s SleepSense sleep tracker taps home appliances to help you doze off

There’s no shortage of devices these days that will track your sleep, but Samsung’s SleepSense is going a little further in helping you doze off in the first place. The slim device slips under a mattress and uses a contactless sensor to measure movements, heart rate, and respiratory rate. As the night goes on, SleepSense tracks how long it took to fall asleep, total sleep time, sleep efficiency, the number of times you wake up or get out of bed, and percentage of REM and deep sleep, all contributing to a general sleep score. Samsung also worked with a Harvard Medical School professor on sleep tips, which the SleepSense app will tailor to your own sleep patterns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Are white box switches less secure?

 

Are white box switches less secure than proprietary alternatives like Juniper or Cisco switches?

Gregory Pickett, Founder of Hellfire Security, did a presentation about white box security during the last Black Hat conference, triggering a multitude of news articles which we will study in this post. Without dwelling on the author mixing ideas between SDN and White Box Networking (which is quite common these days – the title of the presentation is about SDN and the presentation is all about white box networking security) the security issues raised are real.

Those security issues are either network operating system (NOS) specific (which I will not comment on as none of them are related to PicOS), or Pre-Boot related (Bootkit). I will focus on the key issues relating to security of NOS boot loaders, specific to Open Networking / White Box Networking.

Rootkit and Bootkit

The typical goal of a malicious user is to install a rootkit on the device under attack. A rootkit is a collection of software designed to enable unauthorized access while masking its existence.

Because NOS’s protection mechanisms are becoming more elaborate, a new kind of attack came up. This type of attack bypasses all NOS security by Continue reading

Cisco security chief: 4 things CISOs need to survive

As the criminal infrastructure that supports cyber attacks grows more efficient to speed up development of new threats CISOs need to constantly learn new skills to keep their businesses and their jobs safe, according to Cisco’s head of security solutions.They have to have solid knowledge of network security, but also have to be able to communicate well, develop in-house security talent and stay on top of how the threat landscape is changing, says James Mobley, Cisco vice president of security solutions and former CEO of security consulting firm Neohapsis, which Cisco bought last year.+More on Network World: FBI: Major business e-mail scam blasts 270% increase since 2015+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Shopperz adware takes local DNS hijacking to the next level

New versions of a highly persistent adware program called Shopperz use a cunning technique to make DNS (Domain Name System) hijacking harder to detect and fix.Shopperz, also known as Groover, injects ads into users' Web traffic through methods researchers consider malicious and deceptive.In addition to installing extensions in Internet Explorer and Firefox, the program creates Windows services to make it harder for users to remove those add-ons. One service is configured to run even in Safe Mode, a Windows boot option often used to clean malware.Moreover, Shopperz creates a rogue Layered Service Provider (LSP) in Windows's network stack that allows it to inject ads into Web traffic regardless of the browser used.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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