Opinions & Analysis

A war of words has emerged between BlackBerry and the manufacturers behind the Blackphone. In a blog, Joe McGarvey, enterprise mobility strategist at BlackBerry, said he welcomes the attention the Blackphone brings to secure communications and digital privacy, but as a consumer device “the Blackphone appears to be designed to operate outside the realm of IT oversight”. He said: “It’s currently unclear if the Blackphone will support the logging and archiving of business communications conducted on...

The key to national cyber security is that all public authorities, businesses and individual computer users must be alert and aware about security.   According to the 2013 Estonian Internal Security Service review, businesses and individuals “must be careful to take all the necessary security measures” after it “detected a number of attempted attacks run from other countries, which tried to access information illegally”.   Asked if this was a sign of success that an...

One year on from the acquisition of Stonesoft by McAfee, former UK and Ireland country manager Ash Patel said that he was excited by the adoption, but disappointed by the loss of the brand.   The $389 million deal, which completed one year ago today having been initially announced in May 2013, saw McAfee gain a strong foothold in the next generation firewall market. Talking to IT Security Guru, Patel said the feedback from within...

It seems that we have been talking about the challenge of there not being enough women in security for as long as I, a man, have been in security.   In fact I dare to think that the conversation has been going on longer, and yet there still doesn’t seem to be any resolution. This is despite me getting to know some excellent women in security, such as Rowenna Fielding from the Charities Security Forum,...

Today marks one year since the first major headlines were published about the NSA’s mass surveillance programme. Published on 6th June 2013, it was revealed by a number of news agencies, including the New York Times and the Guardian, that the NSA monitored user activity on Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, while 24 hours later it was revealed that the UK was not so innocent, with the UK's GCHQ were cooperating with...

Yesterday saw the news breaking across the world that takeaway pizza chain Domino’s was being held to ransom by a hacker who had possession of 600,000 customer records.   In the story, the hacker “Rex Mundi” (who has since had his Twitter account suspended) wanted €30,000 (£23,000) or he would release the 600,000 customer details that included customers’ full names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, passwords and delivery instructions, as well as each customer’s favourite...

As an Internet populace we are increasingly being tracked, taken through covert redirects and are often at risk of serious fraud and abuse. And the situation only gets creepier as we put more of our lives online, and as corporations and governments get better tracking and analytics technologies. To be sure, most people are still happy to get “free stuff” and some are still relatively comfortable putting up with the ad infrastructure. We love to...

This week saw the announcement of the CBEST framework, designed to help the boards of financial firms, infrastructure providers and regulators to improve their understanding of the cyber attacks.   Backed by the Bank of England, Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority, it will also focus on the extent to which the UK financial sector is vulnerable to attacks and how effective their detection and recovery processes are.   CBEST also puts in place...

Former NSA director General Keith Alexander has moved into the security consultancy field with a $1 million a month price tag.   According to Bloomberg, Alexander was invited to give a talk to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, known as Sifma, shortly after leaving the NSA and starting his firm, IronNet Cybersecurity. Alexander offered to provide advice to Sifma for $1 million a month, according to two people briefed on the talks, and...

Microsoft and Google have announced that they are to introduce a “killswitch” functionality to their smartphones, which will render them completely useless if they are stolen. According to BBC news, the two companies have followed Samsung and Apple in offering the functionality and a hard kill switch would render a stolen device permanently unusable and is favoured by legislators who want to give stolen devices the "value of a paperweight", while a “soft" kill switch...