Behavioral Based Email Security Systems
By Simon Heron, CISSP Internet Security Analyst
There needs to be a change to email security if we want to stop seeing high profile security breeches such as the ones that hit Hotmail and Google in 2009, and the America law firm Gipson Hoffman & Pancione more recently. The problem is, most email filtering systems will trust the email address and therefore allow it through.
Convenience Legitimizes Big Brother Security
By Michael O’Connor, President of IronClad Consulting
Despite the fact that CDI has inherent weaknesses, as do all of the prior fraud prevention technologies, it is providing tremendous benefit to many companies, ranging from credit and loan issuers to social networking sites to online retailers. This is especially true when layering it with other effective technologies.
2009 Infosec Threat Analysis Summary
By Simon Heron, CISSP Internet Security Analyst
Three million new threats were identified in 2009, which equates to almost one every 10.8 seconds. 2,905,697 threat signatures were released to protect against new or variant threats, an increase of 6.9 per cent from 2008. Most spam and malware originates from botnets and compromised hosts. There’s been a move away from mass-mailed spam and malware of old, to more targeted vulnerability exploits as cyber-criminals look towards more efficient means of carrying out their attacks. These examples highlight the need for all companies to review security policies for the applications and software that they permit people to access via their corporate networks or work computers.
Forgotten Security: Patching and Updating
By Simon Heron, CISSP Internet Security Analyst
The fourth guide in our ‘Forgotten Security’ series, Forgotten Security: Keeping up to date, is targeted at IT teams, encouraging them to take another look at their procedures, ensuring that they cover both software and equipment. A fully updated system is protected against the latest threats.
Anti-Money Laundering for Crime and Terror
By Michael O’Connor, President of IronClad Consulting
With criminal money laundering law enforcement can trace events from the crime to the money. However, terrorist methodology uses money to fund an activity which has not yet taken place. Enforcement efforts are placed on stopping the crime before it occurs. The challenges are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Open Source Software Design Spurs Growth
By Semyon Dukach, Author and Angel Investor
A moral argument can be made that for any large organization to maintain wealth and power, competitive barriers must be erected to prevent young start-ups from moving in too quickly and eroding the margins. Some barriers such as price fixing or dumping goods below cost have been ruled illegal, but others have been encouraged due to their social benefits, and include trade secrets, copyrights, patents, and proprietary software and business processes. No such moral argument can apply to non-profits. A non-profit is supposed to be driven solely by its mission.
Shared Threat Monitoring Protects Enterprise
By Michael O’Connor, President of IronClad Consulting
Ideally, both government and private sectors would contribute to the system, which would provide real-time updates and warnings concerning devices that were previously known to be used in fraudulent activities. An intrinsic benefit of CDI is that it does not hold Personally Identifiable Information (PII) within it. The privacy concerns become moot.
Vietnam Tops November Spam Report
By Simon Heron, CISSP Internet Security Analyst
Vietnam has become the number one source of spam – being responsible for more than 10 per cent of the worlds spam emails – and the UK has entered the virus production charts, being responsible for 2.79 per cent of the world’s viruses. Brazil, the US and Korea still dominate when it comes to virus production.
Telecommuting and Enterprise Security
By Simon Heron, CISSP Internet Security Analyst
Remote working, or working from home, is becoming increasingly popular as companies seek the economic benefits of moving some of its team out of the office, or having employees that are able to log on at home. But, businesses could be exposing themselves to more risk by using remote workers if the process is not properly thought through and monitored.
Revolving Door of Abuse: Procurement Fraud
By Michael O’Connor, President of IronClad Consulting
Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) was responsible for the kickback fraud that occurred in the US v. Khan case, and has been the focus of many other cases of procurement fraud within the LOGCAP project. Since combat operations began in 2001, DCAA has referred to criminal investigators 32 cases of suspected fraud that were associated with all wartime-support contracts. Of those, the vast majority were related to the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program.
