Privacy and data protection

Analysis: Intelligence key to security business case

Information security is becoming an increasingly important part of any business as the value of information assets continually grow, as do the threats from cyber crime and espionage. Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

MoD calls on academics, industry and inventors to pitch cyber security ideas

The Ministry of Defence is calling for innovative solutions from academia and industry to protect and secure UK interests in cyberspace. Continue Reading

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• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Hague calls for collaboration to realise full potential of cyberspace

It is increasingly clear that countries with weak cyber defences and capabilities will find themselves at a serious strategic disadvantage given the rise of state-sponsored cyber attacks, according to foreign secretary William Hague. Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Japan may be facing sustained cyber attack

Japan's mapping agency is the latest in a series of government agencies to be targeted by hackers, raising fears that the breaches are part of a series of sustained attacks. Continue Reading

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• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Facebook admits to 600,000 cyber attacks a day

Facebook has revealed that every 24 hours it receives around 600,000 logins to the social networking website from impostors attempting to access users' messages, photos and other personal information. Continue Reading

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• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

UK security strategy draws on growing expertise across Whitehall

The UK's soon-to-be-released cyber security strategy includes input from policy makers across government, says Nigel Harrison of the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance (OCSIA). Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Hackers plan third attack on Sony

Hackers are planning a third attack on Sony in retaliation for its handling of the PlayStation Network and Online Entertainment services data breaches, according to US reports. Continue Reading

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• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Infosec 2011: Charity sector shows the way to balance budget and security

Tackling security project by project is an effective way of securing data on a limited budget, says Matt Holland, head of information security at children's charity NSPCC. Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

City of York falls foul of data protection act following printer mix-up

The City of York Council has fallen foul of the Data Protection Act after having accidentally disclosed personal data following a printer mix-up. Continue Reading

By

• Kathleen Hall, TechTarget

RSA discloses phishing-attack data breach details

RSA, the security division of EMC, has revealed the firm's data breach in mid March was the result of a spear phishing attack. The spear phishing attack exploited an Adobe Flash vulnerability that was unpatched at the time. Continue Reading

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• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Businesses spend over £600k a week on data security abroad

Companies are spending up to £624,000 a week to secure their most sensitive business data abroad, a study has revealed. Continue Reading

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• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Budget 2011: UK public worried spending cuts will impact data security

A large proportion of the UK public is worried that government spending cuts will have a negative effect on data security, a survey has revealed. Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Ban threat looms for Blackberry services as India demand corporate data access

India could block Research in Motion (RIM) from 31 March 2011 after government officials expressed dissatisfaction with access to Blackberry services. Continue Reading

By

• Jenny Williams, University of Gloucestershire

SMEs still lack data backup

Many small business lack data recovery plans, despite a recent uptake in cloud adoption, according to a survey. Continue Reading

By

• Kathleen Hall, TechTarget

Cybercriminals target data in transit

Cybercriminals are shifting away from basic "smash and grab" attacks targeting stored data to more complex methods of data harvesting in transit, security research reveals. Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

Government departments criticised over data sharing mistake

Three government agencies have been criticised over a data sharing mistake that led to the wrongful disclosure of a woman's personal and financial information. Continue Reading

By

• Kathleen Hall, TechTarget

Gary McKinnon broke into 73,000 US government computers, Lords told

Self confessed British hacker Gary McKinnon, who is fighting extradition to the US, broke into more than 73,000 US government computers, including those of the US Army, Navy and Nasa, and deleted critical data, the House of Lords heard today. Continue Reading

By

• Ian Grant

What are the dangers of using Facebook, other social networking sites?

Ken Munro discusses the dangers associated with allowing employees to access social networking sites such as Facebook, and explains how corporations can avoid these risks by monitoring the information placed in employee profiles and using email filters. Continue Reading

By

• Ken Munro

San adoption cuts costs and power

Advanced storage driving datacentre area and energy consumption reduction Continue Reading

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• Joe O’Halloran, Computer Weekly

Experts: Privacy and security officers living in silos

To better deal with the data breach threat, industry experts say security and privacy officers must break out of their silos and work as a team. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

Tackling the backup and recovery challenges of tomorrow

Your data backup and data recovery challenges never stop changing. In this videocast, an EMC executive and a storage analyst discuss the new approaches you'll need to solve tomorrow's backup and recovery challenges. Continue Reading

Cybercriminals employ toolkits in rising numbers to steal data

The market is increasing for crimeware toolkits that help cybercriminals avoid detection and exploit flaws, according to new research from security vendor, Finjan. Continue Reading

By

• Robert Westervelt, TechTarget

Data security breach at Pfizer affects thousands

A Pfizer employee removed files exposing 34,000 people to potential identity fraud, according to the company. It was the third data breach at the company in three months. Continue Reading

By

• SearchSecurity.com Staff

User performs data storage U-turn

U-Store-It, a national self-storage company, decentralized its data centers, migrated data from SAN to DAS and de-clustered Exchange to simplify storage management. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

TJX profit takes hit over data breach

TJX says it has spent $256 million responding to the massive data breach that exposed 45 million customers to identity fraud, and the bottom line has suffered as a result. Continue Reading

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• SearchSecurity.com Staff

VeriSign employee data exposed in laptop theft

Current and former employees of VeriSign were exposed to potential data fraud when a laptop housing their information was stolen from the car of a former employee. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

Attackers ultimately drive security market, analyst says

The security market is being driven by spam gangs, cyberthieves and other criminals bent on hacking into company and government databases to steal sensitive information. Continue Reading

By

• Robert Westervelt, TechTarget

Springing leaks: Getting smart about data loss prevention

Companies are showing increased interest in data loss prevention (DLP) products, but they won't work well unless the business needs are understood and well defined. Continue Reading

By

• Neil Roiter, TechTarget

Cisco fixes fresh flaws in IOS

Attackers could exploit two flaws in Cisco's IOS to cause a denial of service or tamper with data in a device file system. Continue Reading

By

• SearchSecurity.com Staff

Quiz: Preventing data leaks

A six-question multiple-choice quiz to test your understanding of the content presented by expert Richard Bejtlich in this lesson of SearchSecurity.com's Data Protection Security School. Continue Reading

Quiz: Enterprise strategies for protecting data at rest

A five-question multiple-choice quiz to test your understanding of the e-discovery content presented by expert Perry Carpenter in this lesson of SearchSecurity.com's Data Protection Security School. Continue Reading

Quiz: Demystifying data encryption

A five-question multiple-choice quiz to test your understanding of the data encryption content presented by expert Tom Bowers in this lesson of SearchSecurity.com's Data Protection Security School. Continue Reading

Apple fixes 25 Mac OS X flaws

Attackers could exploit about two dozen flaws in Mac OS X to cause a denial of service, bypass security restrictions, disclose sensitive data and run malicious code. Continue Reading

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• SearchSecurity.com Staff

Architectural firm swaps online data backup service providers

As online data backup services take off, one early adopter slashed costs dramatically by switching to a newer service on the market. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Will data breach be the end of TJX?

This week in Security Blog Log: Industry experts say companies can learn from a data breach and even prosper from it. But is TJX following the right example? Continue Reading

By

• Senior News Writer Bill Brenner

What are some of the best practices for managing the growth of unstructured data?

It starts with corporate policies around data management... Continue Reading

Symantec: Data thieves thrive on zero-day flaws

According to Symantec's threat report for the second half of 2006, attackers exploited misplaced USB drives and zero-day flaws to steal vast amounts of data. Expect more of the same in 2007. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

Hacker techniques use Google to unearth sensitive data

Those who know where to look could use Google to dig up all sorts of sensitive company information, including intellectual property and passwords, one security expert warns. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

LexisNexis fights crime with storage

The document search company is offering a new data forensics service staffed by former federal agents and powered by commodity NAS. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

What are some best practices for retaining data in a highly regulated business environment?

Have a good information retention policy. I see a lot of organizations where they retain backups or copies of databases, but they don't know why they're retaining it or for how long... Continue Reading

Data breach: If customers don't act, data will remain at risk

To make enterprises take data security seriously, customers must take control of their personally identifiable information and stop handing it out to businesses. Continue Reading

TJX data breach worse than initially feared

Hackers had access to a larger amount of customer data, TJX executives said in a statement. Continue Reading

By

• Dennis Fisher

Fortune 500 firm takes a crack at data classification

A life sciences company undertakes a data classification project with Abrevity and discovers the job is never done. Continue Reading

By

• Jo Maitland, TechTarget

Symantec chief: Consumer confidence in data protection is key to online growth

In his keynote at RSA Conference 2007, Symantec CEO John W. Thompson said Big Yellow is ready for the shifting dynamics in the information security market, and implied that Microsoft's growing presence in security is a conflict of interest for its customers. Continue Reading

By

• Rob Westervelt, News Editor

Gates touts secure access anywhere

Microsoft's chairman tells RSA Conference 2007 attendees that a combination of authentication and access management strategies is what it takes to protect corporate data, but information security pros are willing to wait for the proof. Continue Reading

By

• Michael Mimoso, TechTarget

TJX faces lawsuit over data breach

A class action lawsuit against TJX accuses the retailer of negligence for not doing enough to secure customer data and for keeping quiet about the breach for a month. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

IBM improves data recovery process for TSM users

Tivoli Storage Manager 5.4, released this week, establishes a disk cache for most recently backed-up files, improving the slow restore times associated with the product. Continue Reading

By

• Jo Maitland, TechTarget

TJX data breach info used to make fraudulent purchases

Fraudulent purchases have been reported globally, according to a trade association that represents more than 200 banks in Massachusetts. Continue Reading

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• Robert Westervelt, TechTarget

TJX gets little sympathy from blogosphere

TJX is taken to task by security bloggers for waiting until after a massive data breach to take steps to bolster its security. Continue Reading

Did TJX take the right steps after data breach?

Security experts are mixed on whether TJX acted properly following a massive data breach last month. One expert says potential victims should have been notified sooner. Continue Reading

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• Bill Brenner and Robert Westervelt, SearchSecurity.com Staff

Data breach at TJX could affect millions

Retailer TJX Companies said a hacker gained access to its systems exposing the credit card data of millions of customers. Continue Reading

By

• Robert Westervelt, TechTarget

TJX breach: There's no excuse to skip data encryption

Companies complain that database encryption products are too expensive and difficult to manage, but customer loss and breach notification costs outweigh encryption expenses. Continue Reading

Federal government pushes full-disk encryption

Businesses need to follow the federal government's lead in reducing data breaches by holding employees responsible and examining full-disk encryption (FDE) products. Continue Reading

Host-based replication

While the lines of distinction among data protection technologies such as backup, continuous data protection and replication have blurred, host-based replication can play a key role in your overall data protection strategy. Continue Reading

Zantaz buys data classification partner Singlecast

Email archiving player Zantaz has purchased data classification startup Singlecast, which can categorise and apply policies to data before an email takes up storage space. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Messaging insecurity fuels data leakage fears

Special Report: The proliferation of messaging technology means more opportunity for malware to take root and sensitive data to be lifted. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

How to manage encryption keys

Encryption is an effective way to secure data, but the encryption keys used must be carefully managed to ensure data remains protected and accessible when needed. Continue Reading

School district expels outsourced backup, enrolls CDP

Revere School District dumps tape and outsourced backup, and deploys SonicWall's continuous data protection product. Continue Reading

By

• Alex Barrett, News Director, Data Center Media Group

On privacy laws, every state is one of confusion

It's getting increasingly difficult for US firms to comply with regulations . David A. Meunier feels that it's time to develop safeguards and processes for this ever-changing regulatory environment. Continue Reading

By

• David A. Meunier

Survey: Data breaches difficult to spot, prevent

IT pros worry that false positives and a lack of resources are preventing them from blocking data breaches Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

Malware database access sparks debate

Should an emerging database of more than 300,000 malware samples remain a walled community for trusted users, or is open access the best way to fight off digital desperados? Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

Risk management: Data organization and impact analysis

This first article of the Insider Risk Management Guide explains how to data organization is the first step in implementing insider threat controls. Continue Reading

AT&T breach affects 19,000 customers

Online outlaws hacked into an AT&T computer system and stole credit card data on thousands of customers. AT&T has offered to pay for credit monitoring services for those affected. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

What is the most important aspect of data protection when it comes to DR?

You could answer that with one word really, and I would have to say "testing." Just "testing." Whatever you do when you're protecting data, whether it's a backup, whether it's replication, whatever it is, make sure that you test what you put in place. Just because the vendor's glossy ad said that theproduct allows you to restore "virtually in seconds," I wouldn't necessarily take their word for it. Continue Reading

Aren't backups and archives essentially the same thing?

The answer to that can be a "yes" and "no." If we look at a very high level, a copy of data is a copy of data, and that's where a lot of people confuse both as being somewhat the same -- one copy is just kept longer. When we start digging into what a backup is for and what an archive is for, that's when we really start seeing the distinction between the two. Continue Reading

Cisco patches flaws in multiple products

Attackers could corrupt files, cause a denial of service and bypass security restrictions via flaws in several of Cisco's firewall and VPN products. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

AOL data spill leads to dismissals, resignation

AOL has fired two employees and its CTO has left the company after search data from 658,000 customers was accidentally exposed earlier this month. Continue Reading

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• SearchSecurity.com Staff

CSI survey: Data breaches still being swept under the rug

The annual CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey shows companies are reporting fewer financial losses from data breaches. That doesn't mean the good guys are winning. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

Hackers installing keyloggers at a record rate

iDefense researchers have found that keylogger infections are up 65% over the year before, putting the private data of tens of millions of users at risk. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

Security Bytes: FTC cracks down on alleged spyware distributors

Patches fix serious RealPlayer flaws, IM malcode launches phishing attacks; Microsoft warns of Macromedia Flash flaw; Liberty Alliance pushes stronger authentication; FEMA data security is in question; patches fix Veritas flaws and TransUnion suffers a security breach. Continue Reading

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• SearchSecurity.com Staff

Who best to avert data security disaster: government or business?

People look to government to prevent catastrophe. But in the Information Age, some of those people, namely those working in IT shops, need to do their part to protect us. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

Insider threat seen as biggest data security issue

Whether they oversee physical or online defenses, security officers say the disaster scenario that scares them most begins with an insider with malicious intentions. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner

High profile breach brings security to top of agenda

There’s nothing like an apparent breach at a global company to concentrate the mind when it comes to information and data security. Continue Reading

By

• Joe O’Halloran, Computer Weekly

Strategic Storage: Storage security -- Change old habits and stop data theft

 Continue Reading

By

• Maxine Kincora, contributing writer

Sarbox draining corporate security budgets

Corporate investment to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley data security legislation has come at the expense of dealing with other security threats, according to the Information Security Forum (ISF). Continue Reading

Security Bytes: Cisco patch available for ACNS flaws

Workaround outlined for new php exploit. IBM issues patch for DB2 flaw. Payroll service goes offline to investigate security claims , and BoA loses personal data on customers. Continue Reading

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• SearchSecurity.com Staff

Security Bytes: George Mason U. hacked; new Trojans on the loose

Hackers steal personal data of more than 30,000 members of George Mason University. Two new Trojans emerge. BMC Software buys a Parisian company. Continue Reading

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• SearchSecurity.com Staff

Consequences of Cisco source code theft unclear

Opinions are divided on the impact of stolen data now circulating on the Internet. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Brenner