Online Dating, Online Fraud: It’s All Relative

To me, online dating these days is not much different than online fraud. I speak from personal experience on both – as someone who has experienced the thrills of online dating sites (NOTE sarcasm here) and has the privilege of witnessing the latest online scams that fraudsters pull on a daily basis. I live in both worlds – and trust me, they are not much different.

Why the Public Cloud Shuns Security

Did I just use a tactic to get you to click on this? Maybe. It sure is a punchy headline. I bet it stirs up some emotion on both sides of the transaction: cloud providers that are tired of working with auditors and security professionals that are tired of explaining to business analysts why regulated data can’t live inside a public cloud.

Top 10 PCI Requirements for Interpretation

OK folks, here’s an opportunity for you all! In advance of the third edition of our book slated for a July release, PCI Compliance, I wanted to offer up a free service to those of you dealing with PCI DSS on a daily basis. I’m going to do a detailed analysis of ten requirements for you! Here’s the best part…You get to pick the ten I analyze!

Citadel Outgrowing its Zeus Origins

As of April 30th, 2012 the Citadel Trojan was at its fourth upgrade with Version 1.3.4.0 already in the hands of its customers. Citadel’s features, bug fixes and added modules (each priced separately), have long gone beyond what Zeus ever offered as Slavik’s zeal for developing the malware died down when law enforcement got too close for the Trojan creator’s comfort.

Fun with Password Managers

I actually started following my own advice a couple of years ago and started creating random passwords for each site that I use that requires a login. Yep, no more “Password123!” for me, it’s all random. But that poses another problem. How do I store these things in a way that is secure and readily available since I don’t have an eidedic memory?

Security Monitoring vs. EU Data Privacy – Are We Stuck?

Continuing on the theme from a previous blog, what if the use of state-of-the-art security technologies were believed to conflict with EU data privacy regulations? Are security professionals really to be put in the difficult position of not being able to use the most current security approaches to protect their organizations and users? Is there a way to both protect the organization and its users while respecting the rights of users to not be excessively and unreasonably monitored?

The Challenge of Cooperation

Over the weekend, three stories crossed my desk that got me thinking about the challenge that Art Coviello issued to the security industry in his RSA Conference 2012 keynote: to forge a  “collective resolve” to stand together against “a host of adversaries who threaten our very trust in the world’s digital economy”. The first of [...]

Turning Your Organization Inside-Out: Security and the Open API Economy

At the European Identity and Cloud (EIC) Conference 2012 last week, I finally got what Craig Burton has been saying for some time now: “Baking your core competency into an open API is an economic imperative.” What brought it home for me was the presentation by 3Scale’s Steven Willmott, focusing on what he called “turning [...]

How to Best Equip Your Security Program

We have seen action movies where the protagonist, stripped of his weapon, manages to find some everyday item like a stick or pen and disarm several baddies, rescue the hostages, and disable the imminent threat to mankind. We accept this premise because it happens every day; ingenuity, experience, and persistence often overcome the lack of a specific tool. We, as 21st century professionals, leverage these skills and the resources at hand to overcome the daily crises and defeat evil (or save a file that has accidentally been deleted). Cue the heroic background music…

Time to Change the Game Plan on DLP

I was at a customer event recently and was party to a discussion on the ‘disappointment’ or disillusionment in deploying Data Loss Prevention and comments like ‘well, it just doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do’ or ‘it’s too tricky to deploy’. Well, the truth is DLP technology is not something that comes off the shelf in a one size fits all package. Here are the things DLP is not going to do for you: