Say yes to spam
By Davey Winder in Editorial
That, it would appear, is precisely what some fifty volunteers around the world will be doing from April 1st. They have not gone totally mad, but rather are taking part in an experiment to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the first spam e-mail. According to McAfee, the volunteers will live an online life totally unprotected from the scourge of spam, and will blog about the experience. Oh, apparently they have to respond to all the spam they receive as they use the Internet as part of the study. If I did that I would need some kind of time machine to be able to keep up with the volume, to be honest.
The S.P.A.M project, that’s Spammed Persistently All Month in case you cared, will run for 30 days and is designed to “show the devastating effects of spam” what with the proven link between spam and cybercrime, McAfee assures me.
“Cybercrime won’t go away without solving the problem of spam,” said Dave DeWalt, chief executive officer for McAfee.
Rated: 100% (2 votes)
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Blame employees for your security cock-ups
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Data Protection, Blog, Security, Internet on
That, at least, appears to be amongst the early findings of the 2008 Information Security Breaches Survey from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Although the full report is not scheduled to be published until the week of the Infosecurity Europe show in London starting April 22nd, some early titbits are leaking out. Such as the fact that employee behaviour is key to improving information security.
The survey reveals, if that is not too strong a word under the circumstances, that companies are placing greater trust in their staff. 54% allow staff to access their systems remotely (up from 36% in 2006) while the proportion of businesses restricting Internet access to some staff only has nearly halved (from 42% to 24%), and only 9% give no staff access to the Internet.
Yet, at the same time, the survey also shows that staff are increasingly targeted by social engineering attacks and businesses are becoming increasingly concerned about staff behaviour on social networking sites when it comes to what is being said about them online. Hardly surprising when some staff have been posting confidential information on these sites under some kind of weird misaprehension that they are talking to a bunch of mates down the boozer.
So what is the corproate response? According to the report it is a hardening of technical controls:
Use of strong authentication has nearly doubled since 2006. 14% of small businesses and 53% of large companies now use strong authentication for some of their systems. Two-thirds of companies that allow staff to access their systems remotely require additional authentication over that access. Virtual Private Network (VPN) use is almost universal among very large businesses for remote access. 81% of large companies block access to inappropriate websites and 86% log and monitor staff access to the Internet.
Most encouragingly I guess, companies are making staff aware of usage and security policies and then monitoring behaviour. The proportion of companies that have an information security policy has quadrupled over the last eight years. Large businesses remain more likely to have a security policy; seven out of eight do so, and some of the 12% that do not have a security policy per se have an integrated overall set of business policies that include information security. Some 68% of companies surveyed that give a high or very high priority to security have a security policy (up from 55% in 2006 when the last ISBS was conducted) compared with 64% of those that treat security as low or no priority (up massively from 13% in 2006).
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
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APACS announces new fraud fighting unit
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Blog, Security, e-commerce on
The UK payments association, APACS, has announced the creation of the Payment Industry and Police Joint Intelligence Unit (PIPJIU) as part of a banking industry
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
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The digital universe has been measured
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Blog, Uncategorized on
Ever wondered just how much data there is out there? Some folk at information management specialists EMC did, so they commissioned a research study from IDC to find out. Apparently the answer, as far as up to the end of 2007 was concerned anyway, is 281 exabytes, or 281 billion gigabytes if that helps with the visualisation.
IDC reckon that the digital universe equates to around 45GB of digital information for each and every single person on the planet.
The reason that numbers are so mind boggling is because, well, the numbers are so mind boggling. The digital universe isn’t just made up of the Internet and all the hard drives on computers around the world, but also digital cameras, digital television, mobile phones and so on. For example, IDC reckon that there are more than a billion digital camera phones alone.
The really interesting part, however, is that only about half of our personal digital footprint is actually related to us and what we do, the rest can be classified as a kind of digital shadow which is comprised of information about us.
Rated: 100% (2 votes)
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Firefox 3, Beta 4, Enhancements 900, Tested 5
By Davey Winder in Editorial
I’m a sucker for risking it all and installing beta software, especially when its my favourite browser client Firefox. OK, so I don’t install this stuff on a business critical machine, it goes on the test lappy instead. Which is exactly where Firefox 3, Beta 4 has been for the last 24 hours or so. Now I cannot claim hand on heart to have experienced all 900 claimed enhancements that this release brings, but I thought I might share my views on the few that I have noticed.
First and foremost there’s the memory issue, you know that one whereby Firefox has traditionally had something of a problem with letting go. This presents itself in a not so wonderful propensity to keep using more and more memory the more you use it, and not give it back when you close windows etc. Memory bloat is a terrible thing, especially on a Vista driven laptop which has enough trouble keeping up as it is. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Mozilla developers have kept to their word and done something about it. Claiming to have plugged hundreds of memory leaks, the team have certainly done something as it does not slow down as quickly as it used to and memory fragmentation seems noticeably reduced.
But it was the security stuff that I most naturally and most quickly gravitated towards,
Rated: 100% (3 votes)
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European business sucks at data protection
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Data Protection, Blog, Security, Uncategorized on
That is the rather unsurprising conclusion of a YouGov survey which took a pan-European view on consumer attitudes to online security. It revealed that European users visit their bank most often, closely followed by retail sites. Yet when asked if the government and banks, for example, are doing enough to safeguard their data while online, a resounding 57 percent of UK users said nope, 44 percent of Germans said nein and 31 percent of Swedes responded nej.
The survey was commissioned by VeriSign who say that European Internet users are putting as much as
Rated: 100% (2 votes)
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Tough on cyber crime, tough on the causes of cyber crime
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Data Protection, Blog, Security on
So the Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, has today unveiled his plans for the appointment of a Cyber Security Minister to tackle cybercrime, and at the same time rather predictably and totally deservedly fired a broadside at the government over its handling of data security. today while blasting the Government’s handling of data security. Speaking at the e-crime congress in London Davis accused the government of displaying “na
Rated: 100% (3 votes)
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Are Auntie Ethel’s legs the future of security?
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Veins are the news fingerprints.
Well that’s what the biometric boffins at Snowflake Technologies are hoping at any rate, with the release of a prototype Vein Pattern Recognition system. Just as no two fingerprints are the same so, say Snowflake, all of our vein patterns are just as unique. Which is quite handy, as anyone who has ever seen my Auntie Ethel’s legs will be relieved to know. Luckily, the VPR machines that Snowflake has developed does not require you to insert a varicose vein overloaded leg, but rather just your hand. A simple subcutaneous scan of vein patterns is made in about the same time as it takes to scan a fingerprint or eyeball, and recognition is just as quick and easy as well.
Which begs the question, of course, why bother when fingerprint biometrics has gained such a widespread global acceptance and for all intents and purposes is doing a fine job? If you really want the James Bond touch then there are existing higher-tech solutions out there such as iris scanners to satisfy even the most obsessive security gadget fetishist.
Snowflake argues that VPR offers a lower false acceptance and rejection rate while enjoying faster processing, making it quicker and easier to use than other biometric systems on the market already. I am also told it is more hygienic as there is no physical contact with the scanner required, just hovering of a hand over the scan bed. Mind you, if Aunt Ethel got her leg in there I would not want to get too close afterwards I can assure you.
Only a couple of things are missing from making this the perfect biometric security gadget for your business then: an actual production unit and an actual price to implement it.
Oh well, back to trying to remember my password while the fingerprint scanner refuses to believe that is my index finger, or even a finger at all for that matter
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
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