Top 10 Stories

Dell:Automated testing has its place in detecting IT security weaknesses but it cannot replace manual testing. The most effective means to protect data is a combination of manual testing and automated scans. The rising use of ethical hackers and penetration testers by high-profile companies such as Facebook and Microsoft underscores the importance of manual testing to accurately diagnose vulnerabilities.      

Irish Times: Cyber bad guys come in all shapes and sizes these days. However it is just as likely that the person sitting next to you could be the biggest threat to your company’s online security rather than the virtual criminal sitting thousands of miles away. That’s according to one of the top experts from the Department of Homeland Security in the United States.

Dark Reading: The backdoor malware discovered on a server at a US manufacturing company was spotted and cleaned up within 24 hours of its implantation, and by all accounts that particular cyber espionage attack had been thwarted. But the next day, two new backdoors were spotted on two other servers, and the company realized its incident response operation had not been so successful after all. "We knew the Trojan on that system, but we missed...

Wall Street Journal: Trustwave Holdings, the computer security company that audited Target’s protection of payment card data two months before the retailer’s high-profile breach, is denying part of a lawsuit filed against the company in federal court. Two U.S. banks sued Trustwave this week, accusing the firm of negligence in its work for Target. The banks said in addition to conducting a September audit for the retailer, Trustwave performed around-the-clock monitoring and other cybersecurity services.  

Telegraph: Stolen Twitter accounts can now be worth more to hackers than credit card details, according to a piece of research which shows that the law of supply and demand affects the cyber crime industry in the same way it does legitimate business. Credit card details - once the "currency of the black market" - were worth between $20 and $40 when fresh, quickly dropping to as low as $2 when "stale". But recent data...

  Symantec: ‘The attacker still has the upper hand,’ says the Dutch government’s most recent Cyber Security Report. The report continues: attackers are getting smarter, more devices are being connected to the internet and yet many incidents could have been prevented by implementing basic security measures. The human and business consequences are high. In 2011, for example, internet banking fraud alone resulted in Dutch losses of €35 million, according to the report.  Over 3 million Dutch...

Guardian: Microsoft announced an overhaul of its customer service agreement Friday in the wake of angry reactions to the news that it had searched a blogger’s email account in an attempt to discover the identity of an employee leaking its software. “Effective immediately, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property from Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer’s private content ourselves. Instead, we will refer...

  Herald Scotland: A father says his family's safety was put at risk by a council blunder which saw his personal details sent to thousands of people. Renfrewshire Council wrote to the 5354 people on its approved landlords list inviting them to a Landlord Accreditation training course, but also attached a list with personal details of everyone on the list.  

  Data Guidance: At an evening organised by the GSM Association (GSMA) on the role of privacy seals on 26 March 2014, Iain Bourne, Group Manager for Policy Delivery at the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), stated that the ICO is 'planning to introduce privacy seals within a year.' Bourne projected the ICO to move forward on the scheme in May 2014, with invitations to tender in Autumn 2014. Bourne said the ICO is looking at...

Techcrunch: You know those people who put tape over their laptop’s webcam to keep digital peeping toms at bay? They’re not crazy. A new proof of concept is making the rounds today that demonstrates how a hacker can snap pics off your webcam, right through the browser, with no consent required. Well, technically, you are giving consent. You just wouldn’t know it.