Editor's News

Almost nine in ten IT decision-makers are changing their cloud buying behaviour following the revelations about Government surveillance. A survey of 1,000 decision makers by NTT Communications found that 88 per cent were changing their cloud buying behaviour, while only five per cent of respondents believe location does not matter at all when it comes to storing company data. In its report, named “NSA after-shocks: how Snowden has changed it decision-makers’ approach to the cloud”,...

Logins for social media accounts are now more valuable than credit card details to attackers.   According to the Telegraph, recent data breaches have caused a glut of data to flood onto the market, meaning that their value have dropped from between $20-$40 to $2, while access to social media accounts such as Twitter can vary from $16 to more than $325.   According to research by RAND and Juniper, while there is a value...

Phishing attacks which use genuine BBC news stories have been detected.   According to research by Panda security, fraudsters are trying to innovate and create more realistic scenarios. One scam detected this week showed a recent story about a lottery winner that was sent around the globe and informed the recipient that they had been “donated” £1.5 million and had to send their name and address for further details.   However a link led to...

With the end of XP support now less than two weeks away, it is not predicted that attackers will hold on to exploits.   Stephen Bonner, partner in the information protection and business resilience at KPMG, said that if he were an attacker with a zero-day for XP, he would launch it now. “I don’t believe that attackers have long term economic thinking, and would retain a valuable attack. If you are an organised criminal,...

Whitehat Security has announced that it has launched a version of its Aviator for Windows.   Now available in Beta, the company said that this was the most requested feature since the Mac version was launched last October, which has seen “tens of thousands of downloads”   Robert Hansen, director of product management at WhiteHat Security, said: “Outside of keeping our blog and Twitter followers up-to-date since its release in October, we have done little-to-nothing...

Revealing too much information on breaches could leave businesses vulnerable to attack.   According to Reuters, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has convened after a series of high-profile data breaches which has sparked major public policy debates, including on how customers should be alerted, who should bear the cost of breaches and how such information should be disclosed both to government and the public.   However, companies that over share information could become...

Plans to “professionalise” the information security have been described as “too rigid for industry”.   According to John Colley, managing director for (ISC)2 EMEA, the report from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills were worrying due to an over reliance on the CESG Certified Professional (CCP) as a foundation for all skills development in the United Kingdom.   “I fear the CCP scheme will not meet the needs of the commercial sector. This scheme...

Those companies who are compliant with the PCI data security standard are better at addressing perimeter vulnerabilities.   According to a survey by the NTT Innovation Institute, those companies who perform quarterly external PCI authorised scanning vendor assessments have a more secure vulnerability profile and a faster remediation time, with 27 per cent demonstrating this.   NTT Com global director of security strategy Garry Sidaway told IT Security Guru that often the problem compliance frameworks...

A series of legal actions have begun over the serious breach suffered by US retailer Target.   According to the complaint, as “Target and Trustwave failed their duties to 110 million customers, it falls to the Banks and the other Class members to protect those customers by reissuing their credit and debit cards, and communicating with those customers to prevent fraud and repay any fraudulently-made purchases”.   The ruling said that the banks and the...

Government snooping has put a third of organisations off using the cloud.   According to research by Lieberman Software of 280 IT professionals attending last month’s RSA Conference, fear of government snooping discourages 33 per cent of IT professionals from the cloud, while 80 per cent prefer to keep more sensitive data stored within their company’s own network.   Philip Lieberman, President and CEO of Lieberman Software, said: “IT managers are aware there is very...