Editor's News

Seven teams of the UK’s best 13-18 year old code-breakers from schools across the country will today compete in an ‘I, Robot’ style cyber competition to become the ultimate young cyber security defenders. The competition, created by industry giants and government organisations, will task amateur sleuths to intercept messages and infiltrate networks in order to defend the fictional ‘Cyber City’ from criminals.  The winning school team will receive a £500 prize from AFCEA (Armed Forces...

A researcher from F-Secure Labs has written a new report examining how hackers use third party services to coordinate malware campaigns. The paper was published by Virus Bulletin for its VB2015 conference and examines how the encryption used by online services like Twitter enable attackers, such as the state-sponsored group The Dukes, to spread malware and steal data.  “If I had to put it in a nutshell, I’d say that attackers are using certain third...

Customers’ personal and financial data is being put at risk as many industry personnel are not assigned unique login and password details, new research has revealed. The ‘Financial services: access security compliance’ report by IS Decisions, security software provider, showed that 37% of finance personnel do not have unique user logins – a basic security requirement for enabling user identification – which also leaves financial organisations open to the threat of insider trading. Furthermore, 26%...

Netwrix today released the results of its global 2015 Cloud Security Survey that show when it comes to migrating to the cloud, 65% of companies are concerned with security and 40% worry about their loss of physical control over data in the cloud. In particular, 69% of companies are afraid that migration to the cloud will increase the risks of unauthorised access, while 43% worry about account hijacking. Security is gaining increasing attention from cloud...

New research from Fujitsu has revealed that despite security breaches costing businesses an average of £1.46m - £3.14m last year, financial loss is still not a top priority for IT decision makers. The research, conducted by Coleman Parkes, highlighted how CIOs are more concerned with the loss of sensitive data following the huge rise in advanced threats over the last year. The research also reveals how IT decision makers are not prioritising how they manage...

According to recent research from Kaspersky Lab and B2B International, nearly half (45 per cent) of all businesses recognise the serious threat posed by cryptomalware, also known as ransomware, – a sharp increase from 37 per cent in 2014. However, despite this rising awareness, cryptomalware attacks continue to severely impact companies, with the CryptoLocker ransomware, for example, believed to have infected more than 234,000 computers worldwide. The global cyber-threat landscape continues to expand and cyber-criminals...

IT professionals are the unsung heroes of modern organizations –putting work before family commitments and taking the blame when things go wrong, according to new research conducted by Unified Security Management™ leader AlienVault™. The research, which surveyed the attitudes of more than 600 IT professionals into how they are being treated at work, found that almost two-thirds (63%) have missed a wedding, funeral or similarly important family occasion in order to resolve a work issue. The vast...

Research from Sungard Availability Services® (Sungard AS), a leading provider of information availability through managed IT, cloud and recovery services, has revealed that the many retailers in Western Europe fear they lack the skills needed to manage their complex IT estates. The research questioned 61 senior IT decision makers from retail sector organisations across the UK, Ireland, France and Sweden around the current challenges and opportunities in managing their IT. The research was part of...

MWR InfoSecurity has today issued an advisory detailing a vulnerability it has discovered in the Yale Home System (Europe) Android Application. While the vulnerability itself could be quite damaging, this particular app is in limited use with between 1,000 and 5,000 downloads , greatly reducing the impact. However it highlights the risks posed from IoT devices and applications. Robert Miller, senior security researcher at MWR explains, “We performed a number of tests on the application...

A survey* conducted by training company QA, reveals that eight out of ten (81%) UK IT decision makers experienced some sort of data or cyber security breach in their organisation in 2015.  66 per cent said that the breach had led to a loss of data, 45 per cent said that it had resulted in a loss of revenue, and 42 per cent said that it had resulted in a PR nightmare for the business. Despite this, however,...