Information Security

The risks from Cyber cime - Hacking - Loss of Data Privacy - Identity Theft and other topical threats - can be greatly reduced by implementation of robust IT Security controls ...

Steven Murdoch Royal Society University Research Fellow at University College London

Demonstration of CAP vulnerability on BBC One today

This evening (Monday 26th October 2009, at 19:30 UTC), BBC Inside Out will show Saar Drimer and I demonstrating how the use of smart card readers, being issued in the UK to authenticate online banking transactions, can be circumvented. The programme will be broadcast on BBC One, but only in the East of England and Cambridgeshire, however it shoul...

26 October 2009 /security

Retired Member 

People are the biggest vulnerability

One of my favourite TV programmes is "The Real Hustle" where a team of ex-confidence tricksters show how easy it is to use social engineering to gain access to other peoples' goods and money. Of the three security areas that can be addressed, people, process and tools, people provide both the largest target and, due to reluctance to own ...

27 August 2009 /security /regulation

Retired Member 

130 million stolen card details - are you kidding?

So I read today that a guy, a known hacker in fact, has been charged in the US with rifling 130 million card details from various agencies and stores and he is about to go to jail for a long time. Story here. This is the pits don't you think? How long have we got to put up with business and governments telling Joe Public that it's ok, we have it ...

17 August 2009 /security

Retired Member 

Few New Risks At Large But Large Risk

On the IT front I can't report any real increase in the level of risks out there. With a couple of conventions on at the moment we could get a few new exploits, but they don't really effect the general risk level, after all, the horse has bolted and that data just isn't going to come back, except as fraud. Could it get any worse? Not if the smarte...

31 July 2009 /regulation

Matt White North America editor at Finextra

Nyse network data exposed on unsecured server

Another day, another example of sloppy security. Wired reports that sensitive information about the New York Stock Exchange's network has been lying around on an unsecured server for about a year. On the server were "directories of files containing logs, server names, IP addresses, lists of hardware, lists of software versions running on the ...

29 July 2009 /security

Elton Cane Digital product delivery at News Corp Australia

Suspicious fire at liquidated bank

There's an interesting news snippet from Jakarta today about a fire at IFI Bank, which was liquidated by Indonesia's central bank in April. It's slightly suspicious, but not in the sense of the blaze being started deliberately. Firefighters say it was caused by a short circuit in a paper shredder, which caused a nearby sofa to catch alight. I don'...

15 June 2009 /security

Retired Member 

Cybercrime Czar? Government bailout for cybercrime?

Barack Obama announced last week that there will be a new Cybercrime Czar in the US reporting directly to the president. We wonder what, if any good that will do. Can he/she be more than a figurehead when the crimes they want to stop originate in the Ukraine or Bulgaria or Indonesia? Will they attempt to burden us with more ineffective regulation?...

01 June 2009 /security /regulation

Retired Member 

Thinking and Awareness Needed to Stop Crime, Not Just Tech

Recently, a targeted crime spree hit Staten Island with 250 Sovereign Bank customers caught up in a never-ending technological arms race between criminals and the rest of us. This time it wasn’t the latest hacker sitting at a far away computer in the middle of the night. Rather it was a small gang that used skimming technology and video cameras...

27 May 2009 /security /regulation

Retired Member 

Real-time global anti-fraud collaboration is already here

In a week filled with data breach news, it's refreshing to see Visa's chief risk officer call for collaboration to stop fraud, and I applaud, however, there's something very important missing. Collaborating to share critical information and insights about fraud among "all players in the payment system", as well as government organizations...

25 March 2009 /security /regulation

Retired Member 

Data breaches demand earlier detection, better remediation

Data breaches are becoming all too common -- so common and so large in scale that we are rapidly becoming desensitized to the news. But the effect of a data breach has the potential to crush companies. From the direct financial loss, to protecting consumers whose information has been compromised, to dealing with civil legal issues and penalties an...

05 March 2009 /security /regulation