Telephone Scams
I recently appeared on the Morning Show on TV3 to discuss the issue of Irish mobile phone subscribers being targeted by a phone scam. It appears that those behind the scam would place a call to a victim’s phone but hang up before they could answer thereby creating a missed call on the person’s phone. […]
Securing the Human Comes to Ireland
I am delighted to say that BH Consulting will be the Irish partner for SANs Securing the Human. As a member of the advisory board for Securing the Human I’ve seen it develop into one of the best security awareness training program currently available. Securing the Human provides organisations with a comprehensive and cost effective solution to […]
Security Breach At the North Pole
Well it had to happen. Reports are coming in of a serious security incident at the North Pole resulting in the loss of Santa’s naughty and nice list. It appears that an unencrypted USB key containing the list was lost. There are already reports that the information on the USB key has been leaked. Obviously the […]
Economic Espionage – The Reality
There is a lot of rhetoric in the media lately about cyber warfare and cybercrime. While a lot of this coverage is hyperbole and is often backed by vendors trying to promote their products, there is a reality that we should acknowledge. Espionage has been going on ever since man organised himself into tribes. In the […]
Phishing Email Targeting Irish Revenue Service
Today I received an interesting email. It was a phishing email purporting to be from the Irish Revenue Service. It bore the good news that I was due a tax refund, €278 in fact. In these days of economic strife €278 could come in quite handy. However, closer examination of the email reveals that it […]
MakeITSecure Campaign Launched
The Department of Communications recently launched its latest MakeITSecure campaign. The purpose of the campaign is to raise better awareness amongst people and businesses about the security issues they face and how to address them. I attended the launch and thought it was interesting how the Department highlighted the risks many people now face using […]
Gardai Issue Warning About Police Themed Scam
The Gardai are warning the public to be aware of a computer scam which utilises Garda logos to make it look like an official communique fron An Garda Siochana. The scam after a PC has been infected with a piece of malware. That malware detects which country the computer is located in and pops up […]
LinkedIn LeaksOut
Earlier today it emerged that a large database of 6.5 million passwords belonging to users of the popular professional network, LinkedIn, was leaked onto the Internet. I was first made aware of the issue early this morning by Per Thorsheim (@thorsheim), a Norwegian security professional who specialises in password security. Once the news broke on […]
10 Steps to Early Incident Response
Yet again I had the pleasure to work with Cindy Valladares and her team from Tripwire on developing a whitepaper to help people improve their security. This time the paper is on incident response and focuses on how we can better detect incidents. In particular, the paper focuses on ways to detect incidents as early […]
A Dose of Reality
Working in the area of information security and computer crime you get used to hearing bad news and stories. We often can get caught up in the hype and technical challenges our jobs bring. However, from time to time I hear stories or talk to people who make me pause and realise there are many evil acts […]