Cybercriminals in the Cloud

Charlotte Dunlap,Forbes.com

Posted: 17 May 2009 2049 hrs

Security breaches continue to plague organizations, causing CIOs to question whether their traditional network security solutions are adequate for protecting against increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals.

Recently, it was reported that foreign hackers broke into the Pentagon's $300 billion fighter plane weapons program, a security breach apparently achieved through contractors' computers. The news is particularly disheartening to CIOs, because if the federal government--with all of its brain power and billions in funds--is still grappling with keeping its data secure, how can organizations and enterprises expect to avoid Internet threats and costly data breaches?

In a bit of serendipitous timing, security vendors discussed a new type of threat protection as they gathered at the annual RSA security conference in San Francisco last month. The much-discussed methodology included "in-the-cloud'' security intelligence, as it borrows from reputation services--an effective security technique that has primarily been used to verify sender data in e-mails. Specifically, CIOs will begin to see a major trend this year whereby infrastructure companies integrate reputation services with traditional networking devices such as Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) and firewalls.

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Reputation services can check, score and block IP addresses. These services have proved themselves to be critical to e-mail security and Web security solutions because they can block as much as 90% of bad traffic at an organization's gateway, alleviating the burden of filtering unwanted communications.

The point is that cybercrime and malware have become so advanced and relentless that trying to maintain a database with hundreds of thousands of signatures will no longer cut it in keeping companies up on the latest threats. Reputation services, on the other hand, dynamically use behavioral techniques in-the-cloud to weed out suspicious IP locations and behaviors.

So in the same way reputation services have significantly shored up secure messaging security by blocking bad IP addresses at the gateway, the intelligence services can also eliminate the need for IPS and firewalls to scan and inspect Internet-based content on the network. The services can intelligently block unwanted data in real-time in the cloud before it even approaches customers' networks.

Cisco is the first vendor to announce this type of "Global Correlation,'' which links its reputation services with security offerings, including its IPS and firewall products. Other major network security players will follow suit, probably even by this year. Cisco is offering a hybrid approach to its traditional IPS, which sits on the customer premise, but is now able to tap the intelligence of Cisco's Security Intelligence Operations to check for the latest Internet threats. (Cisco acquired e-mail security leader IronPort two years ago, primarily for its reputation service.)

Other IPS leaders expected to follow similar strategies include TippingPoint, McAfee, IBM ISS, Check Point and Sourcefire. Unified Threat Management (UTM) providers, including Fortinet, WatchGuard, SonicWall and Netgear, whose solutions include intrusion prevention, are also able to tap cloud-based reputation services to improve security.

So here's what CIOs need to keep in mind: Who's providing your IDS/IPS, UTM and firewall technology? Does the vendor have a strategy for integrating reputation services into its solutions? Better yet, does the vendor have access to a solid reputation service? These are questions to ask current or prospective technology partners, and as part of your homework, read up on how reputation services, including SenderBase (IronPort/Cisco), TrustedSource (Secure Computing, now McAfee), Trend Micro Network Reputation Services and the Commtouch Reputation Service, have improved e-mail security and Web security dramatically.

(Charlotte Dunlap is vice president of Research at Synergy Research Group. Her expertise is in network security and threat protection. )

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

PC software piracy rate here dips

How about at your place, country? Is software piracy difficult to put a tab on?

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by Esther Ng

05:55 AM May 13, 2009

FOR every $100 of personal computer software sold worldwide last year, $69 was pirated.

But in Singapore, the problem is much less severe. Following widespread public education, legislation and enforcement, the PC software piracy rate here has dipped to a new low. According to the latest BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study, the software piracy rate here dropped to 36 per cent last year from 37 per cent in 2007. It is also a marked improvement from 43 per cent in 2003.

Despite the decline in the software piracy rate here, absolute dollar losses rose to US$163 million ($238 million) last year from US$159 million in 2007, the study showed. IDC's Asia-Pacific consulting operations vice-president Victor Lim said absolute dollar "losses will increase if the rate of piracy decline is slower than the rate of software growth".

Amid the ongoing recession, Mr Lim expects companies and consumers to delay new PC purchases, a tendency that will cause the piracy rate to rise as "older computers are more likely to have unlicensed software".

Singapore's software market, including legal and pirated products, grew to US$460 million last year from US$430 million in 2007, according to the study. ESTHER NG

From TODAY – Wednesday, 13-May-2009

Keep watch on your kids - for free - with Norton

04:02 PM May 08, 2009

Out of touch and concerned with what your kids are up to online? Symantec is offering the OnlineFamily.Norton (www.onlinefamily.norton.com) parental control service for free till 2010.

With the web-based service, parents can use a browser on any Internet-connected device to monitor their kids’ online activities in real-time and choose to receive email reports on selected activities. They can also limit computer usage. The service automatically creates customisable age-appropriate settings for each child when parents sign up online. Parents can then download and install Norton Safety Minder onto each child’s Mac or Windows-based computer.

Apart from monitoring the sites their children surf, parents can view words their children search on Google, YouTube and Wikipedia. OnlineFamily.Norton can monitor instant messenger chats on Windows computers and activities on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. HEDIRMAN SUPIAN

From TODAY, Tech – Friday, 08-May-2009