Privacy in the 21st Century – Global Security Week '07
The 3rd annual Global Security Week will run from September 3rd to 9th 2007 with this year’s theme being “Privacy in the 21st Century”. The theme this year is intended to highlight how individuals and companies can better protect personal information that is not only stored online and on various different computer systems, such as […]
List of Security Certifications
In a previous post I talked about the value of certifications in the information security industry. As a result of that post a number of people asked me what certifications are available? Luckily I previously compiled a list of certifications for a study group run by ENISA (the European Network and Information Security Agency). So […]
Dublin the Centre for Industrial Espionage?
An interesting article appeared in last weekend’s Sunday Life newspaper. In the article an ex-CIA agent, Bob Baer upon whom the movie “Syriana” was based, claims that “Belfast and Dublin are major centres of industrial espionage” and claims Dublin is the “centre for commercial spying”. The article continues on to claim that there is a service in […]
Home Help
If you are like me you probably often get asked by friends and family how best they should keep themselves secure when browsing the internet. Below are some of the key things I tell people to remember when using the Internet;
To Patch or not to Patch – That is the Question
Yet another month has come and brought with it Microsoft patch Tuesday and a number of critical patches that need to be applied. To be fair to Microsoft they have made great strides in securing their applications and love or hate patch Tuesday at lease we know that we can expect patches from Microsoft. It […]
Botnets – Digital Weapons of Mass Destruction?
In a previous post “CERTs to the rescue” I highlighted how various CSIRTS around Europe assisted Estonia in dealing with a series of ongoing cyber attacks. A number of subsequent media articles highlighted that Estonia felt Russia had initiated Cyber Warfare against them. Subsequent analysis of the attacks still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Yes some of […]
He Who Lives by the Sword, Dies by The Sword
I recently met a colleague for lunch who works for an anti-virus vendor. During our conversation my lunch colleague highlighted some embarrassing mistakes his own company recently made with regards to faulty updates to their products. I pointed out that Symantec recently crippled millions of PCs in China with a faulty signature update. While this […]
Security & Google Docs
A client of mine contacted me recently regarding using Google Docs as the corporate standard for his company. The premise being workers would be able to work together and collaborate on projects no matter where they are. On the surface this seems like a good idea so I went and had a look at Google […]
NIST Release 5 new Publications
NIST (the US National Institute of Standards and Technology) have released 5 new publications relating to information security. The publications that NIST produce are excellent and serve as a great resource for anyone working in the Infromation Security field. The latest publications are; Draft SP 800-44 version 2, Guidelines on Securing Public Web Servers Draft […]
Security Concerns Over Travel Visa Website
The company hosting a website that processes visa applications from Indian citizens wishing to travel to the UK had a security hole for over a year allowing someone to view and modify the details of other applicants. The potential abuse of this flaw by criminals and terrrorists is frightening as it could have allowed them to […]