IDG Contributor Network: On-screen security alerts don’t work

Pop-up alerts on computer screens don’t work because they arrive at the wrong times, scientists say.Despite the popular belief—cultivated perhaps mainly by bosses—that humans can multitask, many believe they can’t. And that hypothesis may be proven, in part, by the discovery that on-screen alerts generally don’t achieve action if one is busy doing something else. The result is an increase in security vulnerabilities.Computer users are engrossed in tasks when the randomly timed alerts arrive, and it makes them less likely to respond.+ Also on Network World: How to craft a security awareness program that works +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Top tools for preventing data leaks

Most security tools are focused on keeping external attackers at bay. But what about the sensitive data that lives inside your network? How do you make sure it doesn’t get out, either intentionally or by accident?That’s where Data Loss Prevention (DLP) comes into play. DLP tools are designed to block protected data from being shared in various ways, everything from e-mail attachments to printing to even screen captures. DLP can protect core network stores as well as connected endpoints which might have confidential information.We looked at DLP solutions from Comodo, Digital Guardian and Forcepoint. Symantec was invited to participate, but declined.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Top tools for preventing data leaks

Data loss prevention toolsImage by ThinkstockWe tested data loss prevention (DLP) tools from Comodo, Digital Guardian and Forcepoint. These products are designed to stop protected data from being shared in multiple ways, everything from e-mail attachments to printing to even screen captures. Forcepoint Triton was the most mature, easiest to setup and had the most features. Digital Guardian DLP was able to eliminate almost all false positives and would be a good choice for organizations with huge amounts of intellectual property. Comodo DLP offered a lot of flexibility as well as extras like a VPN, firewall, patch and mobile device manager, making it a good choice for organizations getting up to speed with their overall cybersecurity defenses. Read the full review.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top tools for preventing data leaks

Data loss prevention toolsImage by ThinkstockWe tested data loss prevention (DLP) tools from Comodo, Digital Guardian and Forcepoint. These products are designed to stop protected data from being shared in multiple ways, everything from e-mail attachments to printing to even screen captures. Forcepoint Triton was the most mature, easiest to setup and had the most features. Digital Guardian DLP was able to eliminate almost all false positives and would be a good choice for organizations with huge amounts of intellectual property. Comodo DLP offered a lot of flexibility as well as extras like a VPN, firewall, patch and mobile device manager, making it a good choice for organizations getting up to speed with their overall cybersecurity defenses. Read the full review.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hot products from VMWorld 2016

Moving to VegasImage by ThinkstockFor the first time VMware has moved its domestic VMWorld conference to Las Vegas – and what better place than under the bright lights of the strip to talk about the latest in virtualization, SDN, containers, hyperconverged infrastructure and mobile management. Check out our compilation of the hottest new products and services being announced and displayed at VMWorld 2016. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco DevNet Scavenger Hunt at GSX 17

At Cisco's GSX conference at the start of FY17, the DevNet team made a programming scavenger hunt by posting daily challenges that required using things like containers, Cisco Shipped, Python, and RESTful APIs in Cisco software in order to solve puzzles. In order to submit an answer, the team created an API that contestants had to use (in effect creating another challenge that contestants had to solve).

This post contains the artifacts I created while solving some of the challenges.

VMworld 2016 Day 1 Keynote

This is a liveblog of the day 1 keynote at VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas, NV. I managed to snag a somewhat decent seat in the massive bloggers/press/analysts area, though it filled up really quickly. Based on the announcements made this morning, it should be a great general session, and I’m really interested to see how its received by the community.

The keynote starts with a high-energy percussion/DJ session, followed by a talk about tomorrow—from where tomorrow will emerge, what tomorrow will look like, and what tomorrow will care about. Don’t stand in line for tomorrow; you are tomorrow, because tomorrow is about people. Which way will you face? What will you do to bring about tomorrow? All of this lines up, naturally, with VMworld’s “be_Tomorrow” theme.

After that talk Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, takes the stage. He talks briefly about his foot injury, then thanks the 21 “Alumni Elite” who have attended every single VMworld. Gelsinger then moves into a discussion of buzzwords and “digital transformation,” claiming that all businesses are digital businesses, and therefore all businesses need to worry about the challenges that face digital businesses. Gelsinger talks about a couple companies that have Continue reading

Opera warns 1.7 million Opera Sync users of breach, forces password reset

About 350 million people use the Opera browser. Of those, 1.7 million received an email from Opera, warning that attackers breached Opera’s cloud Sync service server. Even if a person didn’t check their email, they would have known something was up since Opera forced a password reset for Sync users.Opera announced the breach on Friday. The company said it detected and then “quickly blocked” an attack last week, but “some data, including some of our sync users’ passwords and account information, such as login names, may have been compromised.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Opera warns 1.7 million Opera Sync users of breach, forces password reset

About 350 million people use the Opera browser. Of those, 1.7 million received an email from Opera, warning that attackers breached Opera’s cloud Sync service server. Even if a person didn’t check their email, they would have known something was up since Opera forced a password reset for Sync users.Opera announced the breach on Friday. The company said it detected and then “quickly blocked” an attack last week, but “some data, including some of our sync users’ passwords and account information, such as login names, may have been compromised.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Building a Raspberry Pi-powered Barkometer, Part 1

I recently had a visit from my local animal control department. A youthful, uniformed guy rang the doorbell and handed me a letter. He told me that there had been a complaint from a neighbor (he, of course, was not at liberty to reveal the identity of the neighbor) about my dog barking. This was unexpected because my dog, Harvey (he’s an Australian Shepherd), doesn’t bark that much and when he does, it’s usually just a couple of midrange yelps. He mostly barks when he exits the back door (he always assumes that there’s some critter that needs to be dealt with) and occasionally, if the birds dare to land on our trees, he'll shout a few times but even then, it’s a brief protest rather than a drawn out rager. I’d argue that other neighbors' dogs are far noisier than my dog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Connecting Python To Slack For Testing And Development

The scripting language Python can retrieve information from or publish information into the messaging app Slack. This means you can write a program that puts info into Slack for you, or accepts your queries using Slack as the interface. This is useful if you spend a lot of time in Slack, as I do.

The hard work of integrating Slack and Python has been done already. Slack offers an API, and there are at least two open source Python libraries that make leveraging these APIs in your Python code a simple task. I chose slacker after a bit of googling, but it’s not a preference borne of experience. The community seems to be behind slacker as opposed to Slack’s own python-slackclient, so I went that direction.

Steps

  1. I’ll assume you’ve got Python installed already. My environment is Ubuntu Server 16.04 with Python 2.7.12.
  2. Install the python package manger pip, if you don’t already have it.
    sudo apt install python-pip
  3. Install the slacker python library.
    pip install slacker
  4. Generate a testing and dev token at the Slack API web site.
    https://api.slack.com/web
    Slack_Web_API___Slack
  5. The token will be everything required for authentication to your Slack group. Protect it Continue reading

It takes a village: Change management with Office 365

One of the key benefits of leveraging Office 365 for your SharePoint solutions is that you will be able to take advantage of all of the latest and greatest advances in the platform as they are launched. This means that you don’t have to worry about managing upgrades and fixes – and this should save time and resources associated with platform management. But, it also means that you have less control over when changes happen in your environment – and that means you need to stay on top of what Microsoft is planning. Successful change management is a lot about managing expectations. When people are fully informed and aware of changes to the software they use every day, the changes can be easier to accept – especially if you have evaluated the impact of these changes in advance. To ensure that your continuously evolving Office 365 environment is not disruptive to your users, you need to monitor what is happening with the platform with a multi-faceted “lens” – looking at upcoming changes from multiple perspectives. For that, it takes a village.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Unregenerate 20160827 – The Week Gone By or To Come

Looking backward at last week or forward into next week.  unregenerate – adj. not reformed, unreconstructed, obstinate, stubborn —- Current Status Arrived in Las Vegas VMworld early for Vmworld as press/media. I’m presenting on the big stage at Future:Net – an [invitation only conference on the future of networking – on Thursday Morning “Breakfast With […]

The post Unregenerate 20160827 – The Week Gone By or To Come appeared first on EtherealMind.

Notes on that StJude/MuddyWatters/MedSec thing

I thought I'd write up some notes on the StJude/MedSec/MuddyWaters affair. Some references: [1] [2] [3] [4].


The story so far

tl;dr: hackers drop 0day on medical device company hoping to profit by shorting their stock

St Jude Medical (STJ) is one of the largest providers of pacemakers (aka. cardiac devices) in the country, around ~$2.5 billion in revenue, which accounts for about half their business. They provide "smart" pacemakers with an on-board computer that talks via radio-waves to a nearby monitor that records the functioning of the device (and health data). That monitor, "Merlin@Home", then talks back up to St Jude (via phone lines, 3G cell phone, or wifi). Pretty much all pacemakers work that way (my father's does, although his is from a different vendor).

MedSec is a bunch of cybersecurity researchers (white-hat hackers) who have been investigating medical devices. In theory, their primary business is to sell their services to medical device companies, to help companies secure their devices. Their CEO is Justine Bone, a long-time white-hat hacker. Despite Muddy Waters garbling the research, there's no reason to doubt that there's quality research underlying all this.

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Medical device security ignites an ethics firestorm

One security research company is taking a controversial approach to disclosing vulnerabilities: It’s publicizing the flaws as a way to tank a company’s stock.The security firm, MedSec, made news on Thursday when it claimed that pacemakers and other health care products from St. Jude Medical contain vulnerabilities that expose them to hacks.However, MedSec is also cashing in on the disclosure by partnering with an investment firm that’s betting against St. Jude Medical’s stock.The whole affair is raising eyebrows around the security community. It may be the first time someone has tried to get compensated for discovering vulnerabilities by shorting a stock, said Casey Ellis, CEO of Bugcrowd, a bug bounty platform.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Medical device security ignites an ethics firestorm

One security research company is taking a controversial approach to disclosing vulnerabilities: It’s publicizing the flaws as a way to tank a company’s stock.The security firm, MedSec, made news on Thursday when it claimed that pacemakers and other health care products from St. Jude Medical contain vulnerabilities that expose them to hacks.However, MedSec is also cashing in on the disclosure by partnering with an investment firm that’s betting against St. Jude Medical’s stock.The whole affair is raising eyebrows around the security community. It may be the first time someone has tried to get compensated for discovering vulnerabilities by shorting a stock, said Casey Ellis, CEO of Bugcrowd, a bug bounty platform.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Weekly Roundup: Top 5 Docker Articles for this week

Here’s the buzz from this week we think you should know about! We shared a preview of Microsoft’s Docker container monitoring, reviewed the Docker Engine security feature set, and delivered a quick tutorial for getting 1.12.1 running on Raspberry Pi 3. As we begin a new week, let’s recap our top five most-read stories for the week of August 21, 2016:

 

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  • Docker security: the Docker Engine has strong security default for all containerized applications.
  • Securing the Enterprise: how Docker’s security features can be used to provide active and continuous security for a software supply chain.
  • Container Monitoring: Microsoft previews open Docker container monitoring. Aimed at users who want a simplified view of containers’ usage, to diagnose issues whether containers are running in the cloud or on-premises by Sam Dean.  

Weekly roundup: Top 5 #Docker stories of the week
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