Gartner Tells CIOs to Embrace Social Media
By Laton McCartney, Editor at CIOZone
Has someone been putting strange substances in the drinking water at Gartner’s Greenwich, CT headquarters? Some of their analysts are beginning to sound like New Age gurus on a mission to bring peace, love and harmony to the corporate world. Consider these words of wisdom recently imparted by Gartner analysts to clients at an Orlando conference…
Technology is Helping Victims and Fraudsters
By Michael Eggebrecht, Community Editor at CIOZone
Last year, 11.1 million U.S. adults were the victim of identity fraud — 4.8 percent of the population. That’s good for a 12 percent increase from 9.9 million the prior year, according to Javelin Strategy & Research, which released its annual identity fraud survey Feb. 9. Along with that increase, the total annual fraud amount in 2009 increased 12.5 percent, from $48 billion to $54 billion. At the same time, the average fraud resolution time fell from 30 hours in 2008 to 21 hours last year…
Web Security From A New Perspective
By Sean Wilkins, Contributor at CIOZone
Cisco’s existing product lines offer a number of different appliance options which allow companies the ability to block the various web based threats in existence. The problem that this type of solution has is that it does require constant tweaking of the filtering and analysis settings as well as someone to constantly keep an eye on current events as zero-day attacks become more prominent.
DoS Attacks and Continuity of Operations
By Sean Wilkins, Contributor at CIOZone
These types of attacks are typically launched from computer robots (bots) which are exploited computers which have an Internet connection. These bots are then directed by central controllers to do the tasks assigned. These tasks vary but can include initiating a DDoS attack on a specified target. Now when the combined bandwidth of thousands of bots comes into play, any company can have their Internet connectivity partially or completely blocked.
Broadcasting Vulnerabilities Hinders Security
By Tom Groenfeldt, Technology Journalist - Contributor at CIOZone
The way most of the vendors do PC security makes it very easy for the bad guys to circumvent their software pretty quickly, said John Viega, vice president of engineering at McAfee and author of a new book, The Myths of Security: What the Computer Security Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know. The technologies generally have not gotten good enough fast enough, and there hasn’t been the best collaboration between vendors, even though they do collaborate, he added. They are getting better, but some vendors, who market by publicly announcing vulnerabilities in popular software packages, do more to hurt than help…
Hackers Conquer Two-Factor Authentication
BY Mel Duvall, Chief Content Officer at CIOZone
“Fraudsters have definitely proven that strong two-factor authentication processes can be defeated,” said Avivah Litan of Gartner. “Enterprises need to protect their users and accounts using a three-prong layered fraud prevention approach that uses stronger authentication, fraud detection and out-of-band transaction verification and signing for high-risk transaction.”
Report: China Probing Soft Cyber Underbelly
By Tom Groenfeldt, Technology Journalist - Contributor at CIOZone
In China today, there are thousands of people in a sustained effort to collect intelligence, many of them on an entrepreneurial basis within a competing bureaucratic structure. China understands that a strategic vulnerability of the United States is its soft cyber underbelly. I believe they seek to ‘own’ that space, says Mike McConnell, former director of National Intelligence and director of the NSA.
Cyber Liability Insurance Mitigates Exposure
By Laton McCartney, Editor at CIOZone
CIOs are starting to embrace the idea of protecting against the risk that comes about as the unintended consequence of Web 2.0 technology. At the same time, data is becoming increasingly regulated, which is creating new exposures, particularly in the areas of data privacy and reputational risk,” Drew Bartkiewicz, vice president of cyber and new media risk at The Hartford, tells CIOZone’s Latom McCartney.
Ten Most Damaging Data Breaches of 2009
By Laton McCartney, Editor at CIOZone
Every week for the past four years the Privacy Rights Clearing House has been chronicling data breaches on a weekly basis. “These are the mega-breaches that can skew the figures in terms of the number of people victimized,” says Paul Stephens, PRCH’s director of policy and advocacy. Here are the ten biggest, most damaging and most embarrassing breaches to date this year.
Cyber Security Red Flags For Insurance
By Laton McCartney, Editor at CIOZone
They start with basic questions: Are you a public company? Have you been in any actual or attempted merger, acquisition or divestment within the past two years? How many employees? What percentage of your revenue is international? From there they hone in on the specific controls and safeguards you have in place to secure your data and IT infrastructure. Here are seven areas that the insurance carriers are looking at…
