Barracuda

Thanks to the regulatory efforts of the state of New York a wave of title inflation may soon erupt across the entire IT security sector. As part of a sweeping set of rules that address everything from vulnerability testing to documenting incident response, the state of New York is seeking comments on new rules that require banks and insurers to appoint a dedicated chief information security officer (CISO). The rules themselves are based in part on three separate surveys of 200 regulated banking institutions and insurance companies conducted by New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS). The DFS also says it met with both industry executives and cybersecurity experts to discuss emerging trends and risks, as well as due diligence processes, policies and procedures governing … [Read More...]

Most businesses today regularly conduct fire drills as part of an effort to educate everyone about where they should go in the event of an emergency. Some businesses have even crafted full-blown incident response plans that explain in detail what everyone involved in the business should do in the event of a catastrophe such as an earthquake. Not only should more businesses have incident response plans in place that include what to do in the event of a cyberattack, those that do have the those plans in place might want to update them to include what to do in the event of a truly catastrophic cybersecurity event. IT security experts have uncovered what appears to be a systematic probing of the cybersecurity weaknesses of the critical infrastructure that underpins the core Internet that … [Read More...]

The rise of Big Data platforms such as Hadoop and Splunk has made it easier to collect massive amounts of data. The challenge now is building and deploying the analytics applications that make use of that data to make it possible to detect anomalies in an IT environment much faster. As FBI director James Comey once famously quipped that “there are two types of companies in the U.S. Those that have been hacked and those that don’t know they’ve been hacked.” Comey was specifically referring to the cyberespionage efforts that China allegedly employs to gather everything from defense intelligence to intellectual property it uses to advance its economic agenda. In a similar vein of thought the National Security Agency (NSA) has observed that because of cybersecurity attacks we’ve actually … [Read More...]

Getting and the keeping IT security issues on the corporate agenda is not always that easy. Business executives are easily distracted by any number of other pressing issues. So when IT security manages to find its way into the popular psyche, IT security professionals should take every opportunity to share a few object lessons with their colleagues. One such opportunity coming up this month will be too compelling to ignore. On Sept 16, Snowden the movie will be released. As an example of havoc that can be wrecked by a trusted insider there is, at least thus far, no greater example of what can go terribly wrong. While some may hail Edward Snowden for releasing National Security Agency (NSA) that revealed the scope of domestic spying being engaged in by the U.S. government, the fact … [Read More...]