The Folly of Youth
As part of Safer Internet Day organised by Insafe and which BH Consulting supported, a survey was conducted on how young people protect their privacy online. The results of that survey shows over half of those surveyed do not protect their privacy when online. This is worrying as these people are exposing themselves to many risks, not least […]
Pure Mule
A number of people have asked me to explain how the mule scam works. Mule scams are named after the drug mules used in drug smuggling. The basis of the scam is that criminals need to transfer money they have fraudulently gained from Phishing scams etc. to their own bank accounts. The criminals need this […]
Today is Safer Internet Day
Early this morning the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Ms. Viviane Reding, launched this years Safer Internet Day. At 1 a.m. this morning Ms. Reding launched the Blogathon which will be the international highlight for the day. A worldwide blogathon is once again the international highlight of the day. The Blog was launched […]
Changes Afoot to Protect UK's Critical Network Infrastructure
Interesting to see that today, February the 1st, the UK Government announced that it has merged two agencies responsible for managing the security of the UK’s Critical Network Infrastructure. The two agencies are, NISCC (the National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre) and NSAC (M15’s National Security Advice Centre). The new agency will now be called the […]
The Great Firewall of China to Be Template for Controlling Internet Content?
In their 2007 annual report on China, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) have expressed concern that the great Internet Firewall of China could become a model for other countries to use to block access to content on the Internet deemed inappropriate by the authorities. The concerns are highlighted in the last paragraph of the report with more […]
Good News & Bad News
Some interesting stories that cheered me up have appeared in various publications over the past few days. Computer security has been in the headlines a lot lately, mostly for the wrong reasons. So it is nice to see some news stories appear highlighting how technology can be used against the criminals. New York is setting […]
Irish TK Maxx Customers may be Victim of Hacking Incident
I came across this breaking story (more links below) regarding a security breach at the parent company of TK Maxx, TJX, which could impact customers who have shopped in Irish TK Maxx stores since 2003. It would be interesting to know if TJX were compliant with the PCI Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which requires […]
Funny Because its True
Scott Adams has recently published some Dilbert cartoons relating to password security. While they are funny they also point out how dependent our network security is on users selecting good passwords. A worthwhile exercise to carry out on a periodic basis is to run a password cracker, such as Cain and Abel, against your password […]
No Mention of the Proverbial Airplane Hitting Your Datacentre
An interesting podcast sponsored by Qwest with Stephanie Balarous from Forrester Research discusses the elements of good disaster recovery and what you should consider when developing your own plan. An interesting podcast not only for the above elements but also as the discussion outlines the top reasons companies invoke their DR plans. The top three […]
Eye of the Tiger
Tiger Raids were once the tool of high end criminal gangs looking to steal large sums of money from organisations with enough security and defences to make a direct attack highly risky to the criminal gang. Instead, the gang builds up a profile of key staff within the target organisation and then targets a staff […]