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…
PCI Council Advice on Threat Management
By Robert Siciliano, ID Theft Expert and Security Consultant to Intelius.com
Security professionals intuitively think proactively. Our job is to predict and prevent what the bad guy will do next. My job specifically is to instill this mindset into you, the consumer, SMB or large corporate enterprise. Bob Russo, General Manager and Rockstar of the PCI Security Standards Council reminds us all in this Business Week article that it’s not all about prevention.
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.
10 Holiday Tips For Secure Online Shopping
By Robert Siciliano, ID Theft Expert and Security Consultant to Intelius.com
Criminals set up fake websites and then go through the same process legitimate eTailers do in regards to search engine optimization, search engine marketing and online advertising via adwords. They use key words to boost their rankings on Internet searches to show up along side legitimate sites. These same processes are also being used to infect unsuspecting users with malware. Here are ten tips for secure online shopping.
Signature Authorization is Stupid Security
By Robert Siciliano, ID Theft Expert and Security Consultant to Intelius.com
Ever forge your husband’s signature? Wife’s? Parent’s? Client’s? Do you think the clerk behind the counter at Walmart is skilled in handwriting analysis? The fact is, a handwritten signature provides zero proactive security. If someone signs your name to a check, and you call the bank and say it wasn’t you, they look at the signature and determine whether it’s yours or not. From there they assign liability. That’s dumb.
Massive TSA Security Breach Revealed
By BRIAN ROSS and MATT HOSFORD of ABC News
In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) inadvertently posted online its entire airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.
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.
Holiday Temps Increase Identity Theft Risks
By Robert Siciliano, ID Theft Expert and Security Consultant to Intelius.com
Hiring temps during the holidays becomes the perfect storm for employee theft. Estimates reveal that 40-50 percent of all business losses are due to employee theft. Employers need to first vet out potential hires so as not to invite a thief into the workplace.
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.
MIT: Reality Mining Protects Your Identity
By Robert Siciliano, ID Theft Expert and Security Consultant to Intelius.com
Reality Mining defines the collection of machine-sensed environmental data pertaining to human social behavior. This new paradigm of data mining makes possible the modeling of conversation context, proximity sensing, and temporospatial location throughout large communities of individuals.
