Archive for September, 2011
Closing the Password Security Loophole on Mac OS X 10.7
More and more Macs are cropping up in enterprise IT environments. Studies have shown as much as 94.7% growth in the “very large business” category. It’s no secret that Apple has been on a tear in the consumer markets, and the enterprise market is not far behind.
War Games III: Identity Thief Irene Controls Your Missiles
In 1983 Hollywood unleashed a movie called War Games that showed what a determined hacker could do if they (even accidentally) attained privileges to a military computer. The movie got good reviews and even raised an eyebrow or two on the possibilities of misuse of privilege on specific information technology, but eventually, like most tinsel town products, was retreaded into a sequel 2008 called War Games: The Dead Code which failed miserably.
Sneak Peek: Free Third-Party Application Patching
Third-party client side exploits continue to be a favored attack vector especially in widely deployed tools like Adobe Reader and Internet browsers. Recent studies show that third-party programs are responsible for 69% of the vulnerabilities on a typical endpoint.
Another Reminder Why It’s Important to Eliminate Admin Rights
According to a recent CNET News article, the hacker known as Comodohacker is now threatening to exploit Microsoft’s Windows Update service. This comes on the heels of Microsoft’s misstep of inadvertently offering an early look at the latest Patch Tuesday updates for 15 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office and Server products.
Top Threat To Cloud Computing
It seems as if every business and IT executive that I talk to lately literally has their “head in the clouds.” Every conversation about current or impending strategies for information assets almost universally contains some mention of a public, private or hybrid cloud deployment. A more interesting observation of these conversations is that the lure of liberating ourselves from the burden of managing applications and data shouldn’t mean we stop having high expectations about how those applications and data are managed.
Some Identities Are Worth More Than Others
We may be all created equal, but some identities are worth more than others. I’m not just talking about Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates being worth more than the average Mark or Bill working across the hall from you. It turns out that identity thieves target patient health information more than standard social security identities for good reason.
Sneak Peek: Free Mobility Scanning from eEye
With mobile devices and smart phones representing 40% of all mobile phones in the US, consumerization continues to blur the corporate boundary as employees expect and require consistent access to corporate services from wherever they are, on any device they’re using—desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones.
Extending Password Policy To UNIX and Linux
Our friends and colleagues at the Linux Foundation have been hit by a “brute force attack” and many of their sites have been taken down until the security breach is fully controlled.
A Risk Worth Taking?
It’s bad enough when an accidental insider threat compromises an organization’s security, but there’s something worse when it’s the result of a malicious past, or current employee, and according to the results of a recent survey, that’s something all employers should be worried about.
In Denial Over Insider Threats?
Ever felt like if you could just ignore something, it would go away, disappear, self-correct? Guess what? The good news is you’re not alone. The bad news is that the company you’re keeping happens to be the majority of IT security professionals responsible for protecting corporate information assets.
