Why you should be worried about your passwords We’re now using the Internet for a wide range of everyday activities, including online banking, stock trading, online shopping, bill paying, socializing, gaming, entertainment and online research. In the last few years there’s been a massive growth in the number of social networking sites such as Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Craigslist, Instagram, Tumblr. We share all kinds of personal details on these sites as well as music, pictures and videos, most of which we would certainly prefer... 

Sun Kailiang On the 1st May 2014 a United States grand jury in Pennsylvania indicted five Chinese military officials on 31 counts of cyber espionage. The five instantly jumped to the top of the FBI’s Cyber’s Most Wanted list and are all members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The indictment included: conspiring to commit computer fraud; accessing a computer without authorization for the purpose of commercial advantage and private financial gain; damaging computers through the... 

After Facebook, Google, Microsoft and PayPal, Apple has started offering two-factor authentication to help its customers secure their Apple IDs against hacking. Initially, two-step verification is being offered in the U.S., UK, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand. Additional countries will be added over time, per Apple’s support website. The new feature is designed to block unauthorized changes to the iCloud or iTunes accounts, and keep hackers who steal Apple IDs from purchasing digital context or hardware using the credit cards stored in... 

Information security awareness training can be best defined as training conducted in an organization so that the staff can understand the importance of security within an organization. Today environment, information threats can’t be left in the hand of the Information Security team as newer threats are arising from social engineering. An informed user community will ensure such threats are contained and the users are informed on what to do when an incident occurs. Is it necessary to conduct user awareness training? This is a question I was personally... 

“The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it’s difficult to determine whether or not they are genuine” – Abraham Lincoln I saw this quotation at a recent webinar and it got me thinking about how important digital content is to both my personal life and business life. Major and minor decisions are made routinely based on digital content that we have available to us. Most of us are relatively trusting people but we generally seek some reassurance of the information we use to make decisions. As an IT industry and business... 

The longest standing Syrian Electronic Army Twitter account @Official_SEA7, about the only SEA account that has not been banned over the last six months, today turned on the Assad regime linking to a YouTube video of the Syrian leader’s chemical attack on its people. The account goes on to Tweet that “Evil Lives” and linked to a photo of the Syrian President. In a phone interview with one of the “leaders” of the Syrian Electronic Army, a hacker calling himself “ThePro” told Seczine that they “no longer... 

I currently work for a security vendor that has over 25 years of Information Security experience, a significant majority of that experience in the Anti-Malware, Anti-Virus space. Having seen the virus distribution industry (nefarious as it is) grow from a new virus every month to over 100,000 new viruses a day, and the hacking culture morph from a teen hobbyist activity to a full fledge career choice (nefarious as it is); it is fair to say we have seen a lot and we have made it our purpose, for our existence, to understand the evolving threat landscape.... 

Imperva have released a whitepaper on the supposed effectiveness of Anti-Virus products. The conclusion? Anti-Virus products are less effective against malware it has not seen previously. Really? You are telling me a signature based product is less effective when it does not have a signature? Wow, revolutionary. Having previously worked for a virus vendor I am well aware of the Anti-Virus solution limitations. The products essentially work by creating a unique hash of any file that has been identified as malicious. The identification of files as... 

The UK Information Commissioner Office is starting to ramp up its efforts to ensure organisations are taking the Data Protection Act seriously. In 2012 alone the ICO has issued over eighteen organisations or individuals penalties; with an average fine of over £125,000 and total fines of over £2,200,000. A significant majority of the penalties were to government organisations but included a number of individuals. Most breaches came from data in transit, for example emailed data, faxed data or data left on portal devices such as laptops or memory... 

It seems something is up over at our blue themed overloads, Facebook. Bogomil Shopov a blogger is reporting that he purchased close to a million Facebook account details, including, the Users email address, which you need to be able to brute force the account password and break in to the account, the User profile link and the user First and Last name, all for the grand price of, wait for it, five bucks! The deal of the day was via, Gigbucks, which is a competitor to fiver.com, but offering gigs for up to $50. The seller was a user calling themselves...