Archive for Business Security
Shady RAT World Wide Hacking
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Recently McAffe published a worldwide hacking report about what they are calling Shady RAT.
The United Nations, Olympic committees, governments, U.S. real estate company, a major media organization based in New York, a satellite communications company and other companies around the world, totaling 72 organizations, have been hacked by a “state actor”.
While there are suspicions as to which country was involved,it has not yet been proven. McAfee’s vice-president of threat research, Dmitri Alperovitch, wrote in a 14-page report that, “Even we were surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organizations and were taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators. What is happening to all this data … is still largely an open question. However, if even a fraction of it is used to build better competing products or beat a competitor at a key negotiation (due to having stolen the other team’s playbook), the loss represents a massive economic threat.” Read More→
Are You At Risk For Online Identity Theft?
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People use the internet mainly for three things – searching, sharing, and shopping. The advent of smartphones and social media these last few years has opened up a new activity: texting. This new world is where communication is happening is opening up new security. In many cases people are using social networking as an online diary where they share their deepest thoughts and opinions, their travel plans and personal information. Read More→
Medical ID Theft Is Nothing To Sneeze At
Posted by: | CommentsBelow is a report from the Smart Card Alliance on Medical Identity Theft. While the info is staggering the walk away points for me is the migration to PHRs, EHRs and HIEs. Security has to start at the very beginning and that is where a secure token and password manager combination work well together. Read More→
Is Email Marketing a Thing of the Past?
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Email flyers and advertisements largely replaced paper flyers, just as online news blogs and sites are largely replacing traditional newspapers. However, email marketing is becoming less effective each passing day because people are so bombarded with spam in their email boxes that they simply are not responding as readily to blandishments to signup for free newsletters or to click on links in emails from people or companies that they have never heard of, no matter how enticing the offer.
Internet security or the lack there of, has made users suspicious and distrustful to all unsolicited emails. Let’s first take the argument from the personal perspective. We all have been hit with spam in our email accounts. We may have also experiences are own email address being hijacked by email spoofers. All with the intent to get the recipient to click a link or open a file to start the process of identity theft. Read More→
Passwords are More Secure than Biometrics for Network Security
Posted by: | CommentsA Hewlett-Packard’s white paper “HP ProtectTools: Authentication technologies and suitability to task“, 06/2005, does a very good job discussing the different security technologies available (Passwords, Trusted Platform Module, smartcard USB token, biometric fingerprints and virtual tokens) to authenticate a user to a computer or network. I was particularly drawn to the concluding chart (see below) where it compares the “Level of Security” vs. “Administration Complexity”. Read More→
