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BOOK GIVEAWAY: Responsive Mobile Design: Designing for Every Device
Learn how to create Web designs that work on any device. We've got 5 copies to give to some lucky readers. Enter now for your chance to win! Read More
WHITE PAPER: Onapsis Inc.
How to Identify SAP Security Weak Spots
Threats affecting the SAP application layer are frequently overlooked, leaving systems exposed to malicious attacks. This SAP Insider highlights the security blinds spots and explains how automated assessment and audit solutions enable organizations to monitor, detect, prioritize, and prevent threats to close security gaps and mitigate risks. Learn More
WHITE PAPER: NetBrain Technologies
A Fully Dynamic Network Mapping Solution
Accurate network diagrams are the Holy Grail in enterprise network management – most network teams know they should be documenting their networks but haven't found a universally good way of doing it. Learn More
Why is Microsoft updating Windows PCs for a security bug on the server?
The Kerberos vulnerability is only in Windows Server, but Windows PCs are getting extra security fixes. Read More
Review: Acer Aspire Switch 10 flips the price tag
If you're looking for a bargain-basement, light-duty Windows 8.1 machine, the Switch 10 is a solid choice Read More
Five security developments we can be thankful for in 2014
It's not often that we take a moment to think about what we in security are grateful for. And as we approach the time of year when all the security gurus bring out their crystal balls and prognosticate what the Big Bad of the coming year will be, I would like to take a moment to think about things that have happened in the past year that have been improvements. As I found so much news from this year to be grateful for, this represents my top five security-specific developments: The end of Windows XP support It's not a good thing for security when people are using an operating system that is over a decade old. Windows XP was much beloved, and a lot of people had a very hard time letting it go, despite its many security issues. Microsoft ended support for XP this April, prompting people to (slowly but surely) finally get off the antiquated operating system. At the time of writing, the XP market share finally sank below 20 percent; and by web-usage, it now represents just over 11 percent. As the holiday shopping season approaches, I expect that we will continue to see its market share decrease. Major bugs lead to improvements Discovering major vulnerabilities is not generally good news. But if it brings to light years-old bugs and prompts people to fix them, it can be an improvement on the whole. We had three doozies this year: Heartbleed, Shellshock and Poodlebleed. The Heartbleed bug was the most recently introduced; it was only three-years-old. Shellshock, on the other hand, included versions of bash from 1989. Poodlebleed was a bug in 15-year-old software that was still in common use. These vulnerabilities existed for quite some time, and we don't know how many times those bugs were used to attack people before this became common knowledge. But because of the massive outreach and coverage surrounding these events, a lot of people stopped using or supporting some seriously antiquated and vulnerable software. EMV adoption speeds up Last year's Target breach was very bad news; as many as one-third of Americans were affected. But on the plus side, because this happened in such close proximity to other major breaches as well as a looming milestone for adopting EMV, this seems to have changed the prevailing attitude from dread to enthusiasm. In October, the White House announced the BuySecure initiative that unveiled tools to help consumers protect their payment card data. This included an announcement by Home Depot, Target, Walgreens and Walmart that they would start activating EMV terminals by January 2015, nine months in advance of the deadline. But major vendors are not the only ones at risk for card data theft. So as not to leave smaller vendors behind, in July Square announced that it is working on a version of its popular card reader that will accept EMV cards. Tokenization of credit card data. While EMV is an improvement over 40-year-old magstripe technology in use in the US, it is not a panacea. EMV is already 15-years-old, and while it does improve security at point-of-sale terminals, fraud may still be a problem when a physical card is not used. Given the increase in online and mobile payments, that's a pretty significant hole. But people are looking beyond EMV towards the next layer to improve payment card security. In February, a group of 22 of the world's largest banks called for tokenization of payment card data. And in September, this technology got a big boost as Apple announced Apple Pay, which will include tokenization. Improvements in Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) Last year seemed to be the year of 2FA, with a number of major sites and services adding this functionality to their user accounts. This year, that trend continues to pick up speed. This year, both Google and Apple announced improvements to their authentication offerings. After the iCloud leak in September, Apple increased the range of information protected when users add 2FA. In October, Google added support for a hardware device called Security Key, which is a stronger second factor of authentication. While there is a long way to go in security, it's important to acknowledge victories. We can all point to horrible events in security, and many of those were allowed to pass with little change beyond the one affected vendor. As more people become aware of security, and feel the pain of its absence, they are demanding stronger improvements to protect them in the future. What are you thankful for in 2014?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
WHITE PAPER: ForgeRock
Why Organizations Must Take a Strategic Approach to IRM
Forrester finds that to achieve this securely, companies need identity and access management (IAM) platforms that are adaptable, scalable, responsive, and high velocity. View now>>
Comcast app lets customers track service techs in real time
Comcast today unveiled a mobile app that allows their service techs to be tracked by cable customers in real time.The new service tech mobile tracking feature, which will be available for free through Comcast's MyAccount app, is being beta tested with customers around Boston this week, the company said.If the trials are successful, Comcast plans to make the service generally available next year."You have things to do. Waiting for us to show up shouldn't be one of them," Charlie Herrin, Comcast's senior vice president of Customer Experience, wrote in a blog post. "That's why we've narrowed our service windows to two hours or less. Even with that progress, it isn't good enough. You should know when we are arriving."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
NotCompable sets new standards for mobile botnet sophistication
The NotCompatible mobile malware has reached a new level of sophistication, according to a new report from San Francisco-based mobile security company Lookout, Inc.The malware was first detected in 2012, but the newly discovered variant, NotCompatible.C, is the most complex mobile malware the company has ever seen.NotCompatible's writers have rebuilt the entire back end to make it particularly resistant to malware researchers trying to take them down, with multiple servers in different geographies a separate node authentication process, and encryption of all their traffic.Then there's the peer-to-peer functionality."Even if one or two command-and-control servers go down, bots can get commands to each other by funneling them through other bots," said Linden.This is new for the mobile malware arena, he said.However, it is reminiscent of the Conficker PC botnet, which also used peer to peer and encryption and was extremely difficult to take down. Conficker was first detected in 2008, an infected up to 15 million computers around the world. Today, according to the Conficker Working Group, there are 995,481 unique IP addresses that show signs of infection, a sign of how difficult it is to root out.So far, the company has only spotted the malware on Android devices, not iOS or Windows, and is mostly targeting victims in the United States."The US IP address is kind of like being in a privileged zip code in terms of what these guys are looking to do," he said. "Since they're looking to by pass anti-fraud mechanisms on things like Ticketmaster, they will look less suspicious if they come from US IP addresses."The malware create a mobile botnet that is currently being used to bypass anti-fraud mechanisms on Ticketmaster, for spam, for brute-forcing passwords, and for scanning the Internet for vulnerable web servers, said Senior Security Product Manager Jeremy Linden, who was the lead researcher on the report.More than 4 million people have downloaded the malware since the beginning of the year, he said, though there's a separate step to actually install it, which might result in a lower actual rate of infection.However, the installation step masquerades as an Android system update."The dialog doesn't look exactly like an Android system update, but a user might not know what an Android system update looks like," he said.The malware first gets on a phone when a user clicks on a link in a spam email where a site asks them to download it, or drive-by downloads on previously trusted sites, he said.NotCompatible.C is a potential threat to enterprises, as well, since it opens a proxy on a smartphone that attackers could funnel traffic through if employees bring infected phones to work and use them to access corporate networks."We haven't seen NotCompatible used to bypass network protections yet," said Linden. "But it's a very tempting opportunity for these attackers or other attackers that could use similar methodologies."In addition the attackers are able to make traffic look like its coming from the infected phone, and can access anything that the phone can access."We recommend that enterprises make sure their employees run some kind of mobile security product to protect against this threat," said Linden. "And also that networks be segmented, so that less trusted devices like phones don't have the same level of access as devices that stay at the enterprise, and aren't moved around, and are only used for work purposes."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
How to set up 802.1X client settings in Windows
802.1X provides security for wired and Wi-Fi networks. Read More
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