Massachusetts' MA 201 CMR 17.00
March 1, 2010
By Jack Daniel
Massachusetts' MA 201 CMR 17.00 data protection regulations go into effect on Monday, March 1, and that is a huge step forward for the protection of personal information. Breach disclosure laws are old news, but 201 CMR 17.00 is different, it prescribes data protection specifics, and it is not limited to those in Massachusetts:
"201 CMR 17.01 (2) Scope
The provisions of this regulation apply to all persons that own or license personal information about a resident of the Commonwealth."
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New Zero-Day exploit - Astaro blocks that
January 20, 2010
By Markus Hennig
Dan Goodwin recently reported that a new Internet Explorer exploit has been released into the wild. The exploit, known as CVE-2010-0249, attacks a known vulnerability in Internet Explorer and was most notably used to compromise Google. Luckily, networks with an Astaro Security Gateway are protected against this threat. Astaro is connected to the Microsoft Active Protection Program and therefore it is possible for the product's IPS to recognize and block attacks before other vendors are able to do so.
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Programs learn to play in their own sandbox
January 18, 2010
By Tim Cronin
Among all of the New Year's normal ebb and flow, predictions for the upcoming year are ubiquitous. More than a couple of these predictions proclaim that 2010 will be "The Year of the Sandbox". While I think this is a sensationalist way of putting it and that it would be hard to pin down any timeframe for such a technology to become the norm, I do agree that the sandboxing of processes is becoming popular. In fact, if you look at the technology as a whole, virtualization can be thought of as macro-sandboxing - that is, making sure that one set of processes (the guest) cannot interact with another set (another guest). Virtualization has taken off and now sandboxing is headed towards stopping individual processes from communicating with things it shouldn't.
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Basic Security tips part 3 - update your software
January 11, 2010
By Tim Cronin
It has become more and more difficult to identify malicious links and content on the Internet. URL shortners, ads on legitimate websites , virus downloads posing as anti-virus software and of course fake e-cards all make it harder to know where you should and should not click
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Why Retail and Consumer Goods Organizations Need Security
December 31, 2009
Retail, wholesale and consumer goods organizations face unique security challenges. Each new transaction adds information into the organization's database that can be stolen. Storing personal information such as credit card numbers, addresses and even social security numbers creates a tempting target for cybercriminals. A security breach at a retail, wholesale or consumer goods organization damages the organization's reputation and could cause customers to shop elsewhere. Additionally, government, and trade organization regulations such as PCI standards require these organizations to secure this data to prevent the loss of data and indentify theft.
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Cybercrime and its affect on e-commerce
December 29, 2009
The past year saw an increase in the number of virus attacks, phishing attacks, spam messages and other cyber-crime. According to a recent article in CNN, this cyber crime poses a threat to ecommerce. This article suggests that the ubiquitous nature cyber-attacks and the constant coverage of breaches like the Heartland breach will keep consumers from shopping online.
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Why we need hackers
December 28, 2009
By Jack Daniel
In the US the term "hacker" carries a negative connotation. It conjures an image of a dark room filled with computers and a lone man attempting to break into bank or credit card networks to steal as much personal information as they can. While there are plenty of "black-hat" hackers engaging in criminal activity for their own gain, the term hacker has an entirely different meaning.
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Security and employee productivity
December 24, 2009
By Tim Cronin
Many organizations view Internet security as a necessary expense and nothing more. They realize it is crucial to secure their network and select security products that will block malware and filter spam. While recognizing the need for security is a positive step, many of these organizations are missing out on an opportunity to improve their business operations by using these same tools. The most useful security products aren't simply roadblocks for hackers; they also help contribute to an organization's bottom line. Here are some ways security solutions can help improve business operations by improving productivity.
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You wouldn't buy a car without test driving it first - would you?
December 23, 2009
By Spence Lee
As we get closer and closer to the end of 2009 businesses are beginning to reevaluate their security products. When evaluating products most companies have a clear picture of the features they want. So they look for products that offer those features. This seems logical but when you think about it, this method is actually one of the worst ways to select a product.
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Having your computer compromised could cost more than your personal information
December 17, 2009
By Tim Cronin
At this point most people who use the web understand what can happen if their computer is infected by a virus, spyware or other malicious content. The malware can track key strokes, or turn your computer into a zombie. This can lead to the loss of privacy and ultimately identity theft. If the computer happens to be connected to a business' network then the infection can cause a serious data breach, slow down the network connection hurting productivity or even crash the network.
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Partnering with the right tech companies for success in 2010
December 16, 2009
By Spence Lee
According to a recent survey done by TechTarget, 2010 IT budgets are expected to be 2% less than they were in 2009. This is the first time in approximately 10 years that TechTarget has reported a decrease in IT spending. Even last year, at the beginning of the economic collapse, IT budgets were expected to rise, albeit only slightly.
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Why do government agencies need network security?
December 10, 2009
By Spence Lee
Government and municipalities are especially vulnerable to Internet attacks and face a complex set of challenges--protecting the security of data transactions, complying with regulatory mandates such as FISMA and guarding against malware and viruses, all while providing the benefits of web and network communication to employees. Attacks on smart-grids, government agencies and local municipalities demonstrate the vulnerability of government networks. In addition to protecting themselves from cybercriminals, government organizations also require technologies that allow IT administrators to create VPN connections and set up content filtering rules. Often times these organizations are understaffed, thus they require technologies that are easy-to-use and cost effective.
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Small Business should be more worried about cyber-crime
December 9, 2009
By Tim Cronin
It seems like there is a new headline almost every day describing how some large, well known company suffered a cyber-attack of some kind. Often these stories site the millions of dollars the company lost, or the customer information that was stolen. These stories make headlines because they are exciting and somewhat shocking - how could a company that large be hacked? - we ask ourselves. However, the articles often leave out an important fact: In most cases, cyber-criminals don't target specific companies because they are large and well recognized; these may simply be the most publicized incidents. This would be way too time consuming. The hacker would have to spend weeks or even months circumventing the organization's firewall and other security solutions. This reduces the amount of return on the attacker's investment (of time and effort).
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A conversation on email archiving and compliance
December 8, 2009
By Eric Begoc
More and more industries are being asked to archive their e-mail communication due to legal or industrial compliance regulations. As organizations begin to examine e-mail archiving there are a few questions they should ask about compliance before selecting a product.
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Key to success is strong partnerships
December 7, 2009
By David Rogers
I'm often asked what separates Astaro from other network security and UTM vendors. Of course the underlining technology separates the Astaro Security Gateway from other products but this alone is not what separates Astaro from other companies. What makes Astaro stand apart are our partnerships and how we approach the partner relationship. Below are some tips for nurturing strong partnerships that have helped Astaro create a successful partner program.
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P2P Law
November 30, 2009
By Bill Prout
A new bill in Congress could put an end to the use of popular P2P (peer-to-peer) programs on all federal computers according to Federal Computer Week (Bain, 2009). This ban would be the result of a number of high profile incidents where sensitive government documents were leaked from government pc's using P2P software. The leaks were discovered during a Congressional investigation (Moscaritolo, 2009) and have prompted lawmakers to consider prohibiting these programs from not only all government owned computer systems, but also from all computers used by government contractors and telecommuters.
Why do financial institutions need security?
November 25, 2009
By Spence Lee
No bank or other financial institution would consider using a regular pick up truck and forgo security guards for the transport of their money. Yet many financial institutions are doing the technological equivalent by not implementing enterprise level network security solutions.
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Botnet Mitigation
November 24, 2009
By Tim Cronin
If you are infected with a botnet, don't worry, it is not the end of the world. The capabilities of botnets range from nothing to complete takeover of a machine. Most botnets are far towards the "nothing" side, allowing you to continue to use the system, but take a small section of resources for things like producing spam. If you suspect an infection (slow computing experience, "strange" network behavior, etc...), the first thing you should do is simply unplug any network connection. Then, scan the PC with your anti-malware scanner of choice. Once you are confident that you are not infected or that you have disinfected successfully, reintegrate the system onto the network. Of course, this doesn't work if you never suspect a system of infection. If this is the case, then you have to look at some proactive controls.
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Enterprise Technology Podcast
November 20, 2009
Astaro's Gert Hanson meet with ETM's Ali Klaver to discuss the importance of small and medium businesses, the challenges they face and how the Astaro Security Gateway Essential Firewall edition will benefit these organizations. You can download the podcast here: http://www.astaro.com/content/download/6774/59877/file/Astaro-Podcast-Essential-Firewall.mp3
Don't let Cyber Monday ruin your productivity
November 19, 2009
By Bill Prout
Over the past few years Cyber Monday has become a profitable marketing tool for retailers. At the same time it has become a productivity drain for businesses. Employees, still full from gouging themselves on Thanksgiving and hunting for deals they missed on Black Friday meaning they will spend much of their time on November 30th shopping online. Last year sales spiked 15% on Cyber Monday and Forrester predicts that despite the poor economy and less shopping going on in general that online shopping will increase by 8% this year on Cyber Monday.
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What is a botnet?
November 18, 2009
Since the Internet has become a staple of businesses and homes we've become familiar with the term "virus" and what it means from a technology perspective. In recent years viruses have evolved into more powerful 'botnets'. While we've discussed the effects of botnets several times in this blog we've never defined the term.
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Why using technology in business meant for personal use is a bad idea
November 17, 2009
By Bill Prout
Technology is necessary in order to run almost any business imaginable. Even the smallest organization, such as an auto repair shop or a flower stand, has website to attract new customers and the larger the organization the more technology the company needs. Word processing tools, accounting software, payroll software and security software are all necessary to operating a successful business.
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Risks of forgoing security outweigh the cost savings
November 13, 2009
By Bill Prout
When operating a small or even a medium sized business there are certain technologies your business can not do without - no matter what market your business is in. However, because of their size, many organizations forgo purchasing these essential business functions due to budgetary reasons. Depending on the type of technology, the organization may be able to get by without these tools, but there are technologies that no organization can do without.
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Red Flag Guidelines and Small Business
October 28, 2009
By Tim Cronin
It's no surprise that as the scope of the Internet and the services it provides the public grows that national legislators are behooved to pass laws to ensure public safety and security online. One such piece of legislation is the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. 1681m(e)), also known as the "Red Flag Guidelines" (RFG).
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Apples can be infected too!
October 21, 2009
By Tim Cronin
One of the Apple's marketing lines for Macs has been that they do not suffer from the same virus infections that PCs have. This clearly has nothing to do with Macs being more stable than PCs, it is because fewer people own Macs than own PCs. Cyber-criminals are looking to infect as many machines as possible because this is how they create profit. It only makes sense that they would create viruses and other malware specifically designed for the Windows operating system. There are more Windows users, so there are more potential cyber-victims and more profit to be made out of attacking Windows users. But that tide seems to be shifting.
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Shift in how we store data may protect credit card information better
October 8, 2009
By Angelo Comazzetto
A recent article in CNN Money titled "Cybercrime: A secret underground economy" discussed the existence of organized crime in cyber-crime and how organized crime has turned cyber-crime into a multi-million dollar a year industry. The article provided some great insight into the black market of cyber-crime. The fact is, most of the organized crime has turned to cybercrime as the next generation of how they make money. By stealing information and cloning cards with it they drive a massive fraud machine that easily enters the billions of dollars each year. What used to be an exercise in if or how a botnet or worm could be created to steal data and grab the types of information they need, is now a dedicated business which evolves with new techniques and methods almost daily. Make no mistake; botnets are designed to make money, nothing more. It's no longer about causing someone online-pain or hitting back a company, it's about getting the information they need to conduct their operations and turn a profit.
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Basic Security Tips part 2 - Effective passwords
September 30, 2009
By Tim Cronin
A while back I published a post about locking your computer to make it safe. In this post we will discuss how to create passwords that are hard to crack but easy to remember to keep your personal computer, accounts and company network more secure.
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Knowing is half the battle
September 24, 2009
By Bill Prout
Network security is a daily and complicated struggle for most network administrators who strive to keep on top of the latest virus outbreaks, network intrusion attempts, software patches, and web and email scams. Comprehensive Network security today requires a layered approach so that internal network resources can be properly protected against all the different types of malicious content out there. Properly designing and maintaining a network to guard against these attacks can be a challenge to even the most seasoned admin.
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Beginning the compliance process
September 21, 2009
By: Jack Daniel
There are some first steps which will help you deal with any compliance initiative, things to do before starting the actual work of aligning your practices and policies with the requirements you must meet. They seem simple, but are often overlooked.
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Aligning Compliance and Security
September 16, 2009
By Jack Daniel
Compliance and security aren't the same, but they are often related, and even when they are at odds we need to accomplish both. How to do it effectively - that is the challenge.
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Basic Security Measures We Sometimes Forget to Use - Part 1
September 14, 2009
By: Tim Cronin
When talking about network security we concentrate on technologies and tactics network administrators can use to keep their organization protected. While this focus is important, even a company specializing in security can neglect to remind employees and others of some basic security measures. This post is the first in a series of posts detailing some basic security techniques for keeping your network, your identity and your computer safe.
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PCI, Compliance, and Security
September 3, 2009
By Jack Daniel
Some people seem to be confused about compliance- some hate it, a few like it, and some really like to argue about it, especially when it comes to PCI-DSS. PCI-DSS is the much-maligned Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of requirements for companies which process credit card data. Full documentation is available from the PCI Website. The standard is currently 72 pages, not a quick read- and that may be part of the problem; an amazing number of people like to argue about it without ever actually reading the beast.
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Virtualization - basic protection does not withstand modern attacks
August 26, 2009
By Gert Hansen
More and more companies start to use virtualization every day. VMware is aiding companies moving to virtualization by offering two free products to support. Many users start off by using virtualization for evaluation purposes and as they realize the benefits of virtualization they plan to move to production use later.
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Anatomy of a Spear Phishing Attack
August 18, 2009
By: Tim Cronin
Most email users are now aware of the act of "Phishing". Phishing is form of spam that tries to dupe an unsuspecting person into installing something (also known as "drive by downloads") or divulging information. This usually comes in the form of misrepresentation of who the person is. See "Nigerian Phishing" for more info. Phishing scams are identical to traditional spam in that it requires a vast amount of messages to be sent in order to find the mark. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick).
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The Public Cloud
August 13, 2009
By: Tim Cronin
I listen to NPR basically every time I'm in the car. Normally this gives me an ok sense as to what the rest of the world is thinking about. One show I am able to listen to regularly is "On Point". I was somewhat surprised when the topic of the day was "cloud computing". As usual, the show lined up some very knowledgeable people, but as the term cloud computing is a bit vague and has had more definitions than Merriam's can keep track of, the conversation could have gone in several different directions. I thought that it would be useful to call. Have a listen at their site: http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/08/from-desktop-to-the-digital-cloud.
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Why attack Twitter?
August 10, 2009
By: Bill Prout
The recent high profile attacks on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook may give us a glimpse into the underground world of spammers, crackers, and those who style themselves as 'bot-herders'. As you're probably aware Twitter is a social networking site that allows users to generate short messages or 'tweets' which are then disseminated throughout the internet to a larger audience. The service started only a few years ago and since then its usage has exploded partly due to its high profile involvement in such recent events as the Iranian presidential election protests. During this incident detailed, on the ground information was limited due to governmental control which disrupted efforts to contact the outside world. Protesters were able to use Twitter though to broadcast real time details on what was happening to the world at large. These simple concise messages by people experiencing oppression and violence at the hands of their government were seen in real time by millions of people worldwide. The Iranian government was unable to control the flow of information which proved to be a strong message for proponents of free ideas, and showed how emerging technologies and ideas can be effective tools in the fight against censorship.
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Prevolence of Botnets and Their Zombies Encourages Spam
July 30, 2009
By: Tim Cronin
Dark Reading published an article titled "Booming Underground Economy Makes Spam A Hot Commodity, Expert Says" regarding the ease of using botnets for spam activity and how this makes spamming profitable. Some of the more startling statistics show that "For about $10, [a spammer] can send a million emails". Even if 2 people order a product that they are selling for $10, that's a 100% profit over the cost of the use of the botnet. Assuming the actual production of the product is cheap enough, that's a good margin.
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A Conversation on "Health Information Technology"
By: Tim Cronin
On Sunday, the Boston Globe printed a portion of a letter to the editor I sent in regards to one of the paper's articles. The opinion discussed the mandating of electronic health records and the importance of security for such records. Below is the complete letter.
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How to protect your network from cyber-attacks
By Tim Cronin
There are three measures network administrators can take to avoid the types of network attacks that plagued US and South Korean websites including www.whitehouse.gov, NASDAQ, NYSE, Yahoo!'s financial page and the Washington Post. The three areas to focus on are network based mitigation, host based mitigation and proactive measures.
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Tips for securing your Wi-Fi Connection
By Tim Cronin
Recently, NPR's "All Tech Considered" posted a very good and concise article on securing WiFi technology. I would just like to add a few key points for those that concern themselves with network security.
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Virtualization as a Disaster Recovery Strategy
By: Bill Prout
There have actually been a few major disasters in the past 10 years that have shown the value of good disaster recovery plans. Though they're far from perfect they do make a difference and can always be improved with newer techniques and technology. When hurricane Katrina struck I was working with the City of New York's network design team and we were tasked with creating an emergency refugee processing center for the thousands of hurricane victims that the city had taken in. While we were able to throw this site together over a weekend by using a lot of manpower and equipment it could have just as easily been done with a few decent virtual servers hosting the applications we needed. All applications including endpoints security could have been hosted virtually making design and deployment very simple. There most likely would have been significant cost savings on manpower, space, power, etc... Though this is an extreme example it does show how virtual environments can be used for disaster recovery.
As Slowloris HTTP DoS Rises Astaro is Ready
By: Angelo Comazzetto
Recently the Slowloris Denial of Service attack has jumped in popularity. This attack is similar to SYN flood, but uses HTTP instead, basically consuming sockets on the Web Server vs. trying to saturate all the bandwidth. This is an interesting attack, particularly because it does not require a lot of bandwidth by the attacker. It is possible to DoS even large sites simply using a common residential Internet connection, and using Slowloris to eat-up the Web Server's ability to respond to other HTTP requests, by sending partial ones itself and thus holding the sockets open. You can read more about this DoS technique here.
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Advice for the Cyber Czar
By: Angelo Comazzetto
Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that President Obama is preparing to announce the appointment of a national "'cyber czar,' a senior White House official who will have broad authority to develop strategy to protect the nation's government-run and private computer networks", and that this announcement will coincide with the release of the government's cyber-security initiatives and policies.
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Welcome to the Astaro Security Perspectives Blog
Welcome to the Astaro Security Perspectives blog. The Security Perspectives blog is a forum for information on security trends, current threats, news and ideas.
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- Massachusetts' MA 201 CMR 17.00
- New Zero-Day exploit - Astaro blocks that
- Programs learn to play in their own sandbox
- Basic Security tips part 3 - update your software
- Why Retail and Consumer Goods Organizations Need Security
- Cybercrime and its affect on e-commerce
- Why we need hackers
- Security and employee productivity
- You wouldn't buy a car without test driving it first - would you?
- Having your computer compromised could cost more than your personal information
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