Archive for March, 2010

« Older Entries

March 2010: Security News Round-Up

March 30th, 2010

As we come to the end of yet another interesting month in 2010, we look back at some of the major developments in the field of IT & Computer Security in March.

So here is a quick wind-up of all the events that kept the security analysts busy:

  1. Hackers bypass Captcha: In a shocking incident, the highly secure captcha system was broken by US based miscreants. The impact of the attack was huge, with the fraud value of the event being estimated at $25 million.
  2. Review of our Laptop Encryption Protection: Next, we talked about our full disk encryption which is superior to other encryption methods when comparing security, performance, robustness and ease-of-use for both administrators and users.
  3. Hack attack on St. Louis Police: Next in line was another shocking incident, a malicious attack on police department came to light. The name, address and social security number of about 24 victims was revealed.
  4. UK Tops Cyber Security: This is a piece of news which would made have our friends in UK certainly very proud. A report released by House of Lords committee analyzed and encouraged how the United Kingdom has geared up towards the defence mechanism in the Cyber space.
  5. Some of Our Happy Customers: We showcased the words of praise from some of our happy customers.
    Alertsec Xpress is a very easy and convenient service which enables us to secure valuable information on our laptops. Through the Alertsec Xpress service our laptops are secured in just a few minutes.
  6. New ICO Penalties from April: The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) will be rolling out new penalties starting first week of April, the level of financial penalty is set to rise to a maximum of £500 000 (from £5 000), for those companies who do not comply with the Act.
  7. Brazil, India & Korea top the Spam Sending Chart: In terms of percentage spam, Brazil topped with 13.76% of spam, while India came in second with 10.98% and Korea was at third position with 6.32% of spam expressed as percentile of total messages analysed.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

No comments »

Posted in Alertsec Express, Hackers

Tags:

Report on Spam Sending Countries

March 26th, 2010
Diagram of sending spam e-mails.
Image via Wikipedia

According to the report by Panda Labs research analysts, Brazil, India and Korea top the list of countries which accounted for bulk of spam during the first two months of 2010.

Definition of Spam according to Wikipedia:

Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social networking spam, and file sharing network spam.

The security research firm states that main attraction used as part of the spam injection technique is the promise of videos or photos of Brazilian girls.

In terms of percentage spam, Brazil topped with 13.76% of spam, while India came in second with 10.98% and Korea was at third position with 6.32% of spam expressed as percentile of total messages analysed.

It is absolutely true that world over everyone has been infected by the spam problem but the fact of the matter is that there are some countries which are contributing for majority of the spam. Why is that they are causing more spam than others? The simple reason is the security initiatives of the respective countries. When there are no encryption mechnaisms,they become an easy pray for spammers who can easily send spam emails to infect everyone’s machines and inturn the whole network.

The research analysts at Panda studied nearly 5 million spam messages. To identify and collect spam messages, Panda labs had set mail servers. These mail servers which are purposely setup with the intention of identifying spam are called ’spamtraps’. Through a spamtrap it is easy to identify the source ip, i.e. the origin of the spam.

In a statement issued by Panda Labs, “Another amazing data: the spam analyzed during these two months came from a total of almost one million different IP addresses. This shows that the spam is mostly sent from zombie computers belonging to a botnet.” This way, the computers of the infected users themselves are those which send the spam. The cybercrooks have thousands of computers at their disposal which do the dirty work for them.

In the list of most spamming cities, India’s capital city of New Delhi is lead by Seoul of Korea in the first place and Hanoi of Vietnam in the second position respectively. Vietnam, Korea and US also are among the top five countries from which most spam was sent during the first two months of 2010, said the study.

In the coming months, there will be a new report having more information about spam & data about spam.

About Alertsec Xpress

Alertsec Xpress is used in all organisations that have recognized the need to protect their information. Customers range from single-user sole traders and consultants to large multinational companies with offices around the globe. By using industry leading Check Point Full Disk Encryption (former Pointsec) software, Alertsec has created a web based encryption service that radically simplifies deployment and management of PC encryption

Brazil-originated spam levels topping 13% says Panda Security

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

1 comment »

Posted in Alertsec Express, Spam

Tags:

Alert: New ICO Penalties Beginning Next Month

March 23rd, 2010
nothing to tickle
Image by smallcaps via Flickr

If you & your brand were thinking that you could get away with incidents of data theft and loss, think again ! The security industry is planning to come up with stringent and stricter rules which will lead to sever penalties for any cases that report data loss.

These new rules have been issued by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and are all set to be rolled out starting 1st week of April. According to Clearswift CEO Richard turner, the level of financial penalty is set to rise to a maximum of £500 000 (from £5 000), for those companies who do not comply with the Act.

Apparently, Clearswift has been helping organizations to equip themselves with the most sophisticated content inspection technology in the industry & protect companies of confidential data.

According to Turner, “Organisations can no longer ignore the seriousness of corporate data breaches and not complying with the Data Protection Act. On 6th April 2010, the Information Commissioner is upping the financial penalties to act as a deterrent for companies who flout these rules”.

In a recent incident, Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) had reprimanded the Royal London Mutual Insurance Society for breaching the Data Protection Act. The penalty was issued after the theft of eight of the firm’s laptops, two of which contained details of 2,135 people from the company’s Edinburgh offices. The data were password protected but unencrypted.

What the Analysts Say

Industry analysts have expressed their view points on the imposition of these fines,

Susan Hall, partner and IT specialist at Cobbetts thinks, “These new fines will have a profound impact on internal procedures, especially at medium-sized, data-rich businesses, whose growth commonly outmatches their internal development and the maintenance of procedures”.

Dave Ellis, e-security director at security distributor Computerlinks said, “Mid-market firms have not been under as much pressure so this should open up some good opportunities.”

Stewart Room, a keynote speaker at Infosecurity Europe & partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP, believes that organisations need to focus on two vital aspects: the system and the operations. The system defines the security position via documented rules, policies and procedures. Operations details out the implementation of system in daily activities. According to Stewart, in a recent online poll a third of organisations admitted if they have experienced a security breach tomorrow they do not have a system in place to adequately deal with the incident.

Go Secure, Choose Alertsec Now

Alertsec is the frontrunner in offering hard disk encryption as a fully managed service. We provide protection for all information stored on laptops and PCs in an easy, convenient, and cost-effective way. By using industry leading Check Point Full Disk Encryption (former Pointsec) software, Alertsec has created a web based encryption service that radically simplifies deployment and management of PC encryption. Alertsec Xpress offers computer security software from Check Point as a fully customizable and pre-packaged data encryption software solution.

For further information, please email us on info@alertsec.com.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

1 comment »

Posted in Alertsec Express

Tags:

Some of Our Happy Customers

March 20th, 2010
Hierarchy of Customer Satisfaction Needs
Image by gumption via Flickr

At Alertsec, we always strive hard to provide the best-in-class products to our customers. One example of that is our path breaking ‘Alertsec Xpress Service‘ for our customers. As a result we always receive words of appreciation from our kind customers. It is certainly very encouraging and helps us to perform better & delivery quality !

Here is a look at what some of our customers have to say about us & our products :)

Daniel Berholc – Vice-CTO, Tradedoubler

Alertsec Xpress is a very easy and convenient service which enables us to secure valuable information on our laptops. Through the Alertsec Xpress service our laptops are secured in just a few minutes.

About TradeDoubler: TradeDoubler is a Pan-European performance-based digital marketing company offering a range of products and services to optimise return on investment.

Mr S. Hellberg – IT Manager, BTS

We at BTS work closely with our customers’ management teams and have offices all around the globe. The information stored on our PCs is critical to both our customers and us. The managed service offered by Alertsec Xpress fits us perfectly, as we like to minimize both our support and deployment effort, and still have optimal security!

About BTS: BTS is a world leader in developing and delivering customized business acumen simulations.

Mr T. Bill – CEO, ORC Software

When I moved from my previous position as CEO of Pointsec’s owner Protect Data to running Orc Software, it was of course natural for me to protect the information on our laptops. To download and install Alertsec Xpress via the web was both easy and quick. It was a very positive experience.

About ORC Software: ORC Software provides technology for advanced trading, market making and brokerage.

Mr N. Vinberg – CEO, Björn Borg

Securing our information on laptops as a service gives us great flexibility, as we can add/subtract users on a monthly basis and as we’re growing fast right now, it only underlines the need for flexibility. Alertsec Xpress has found the ultimate way of deploying the protection via the web. To sum up it is an easy and flexible and cost effective solution for our organization.

About Bjorn Borg: Björn Borg is a Swedish company that owns and develops the Björn Borg brand. The brand is recognized for high-quality products and creative and innovative design.

About Alertsec

Alertsec is the frontrunner in offering hard disk encryption as a fully managed service. We provide protection for all information stored on laptops and PCs in an easy, convenient, and cost-effective way.

By using industry leading Check Point Full Disk Encryption (former Pointsec) software, Alertsec has created a web based encryption service that radically simplifies deployment and management of PC encryption.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

No comments »

Posted in Alertsec Express

Tags:

United Kingdom Tops Cyber Security

March 18th, 2010

All the internet community of UK would be extremely glad to hear that United Kingdom’s practices in Cyber Security have been found to be reasonable and adequately equipped to deal with the cyber security threats and other vunlerability attacks

The report was released by House of Lords committee. Apparently the House of Lords EU community report looked at how United Kingdom has geared up towards the defence mechanism in the Cyber space.  In addition, the UK has been praised for their security effort which also says that the nation leads every other EU country and their benchmarks are unmatches and something that should be adopted by others in the fraternity.

With the encouragement, UK has also been advised to organize a training sessions focussed towards Cyber security. In addition, the report has also suggested the inclusion of US and NATO.

The report has also criticized ENISA, the cyber security agency of European Union for their location. The agency is located in a small Greek island of Crete.

According to the report, “We are convinced that the decision to site ENISA at Heraklion was not taken on the basis of a careful cost/benefit analysis, and it has led and continues to lead to problems over the recruitment and retention of staff, and over the scheduling of meetings,” .

In a statement issued by, Lord Jopling, chairman of the sub-committee “We believe strongly that the government and the EU should be giving greater attention to how cyber-security could be developed on a global basis. The internet has no borders, and it is important that any proposals from the EC are considered in a global context. “A first step must be better cooperation with NATO. The EU and NATO have similar interests in defence against cyber-attacks and work in similar ways, yet there is virtually no communication between them. There must be cooperation rather than duplication. “Further to this, broadening the dialogue with other major international players, such as the US, Russia and China will be essential if we are to become more robust in our defences against cyber attacks.”

Stay a front-runner in Cyber Security

Choose Alertsec’s Security Products right now

Alertsec is the frontrunner in offering hard disk encryption as a fully managed service. We provide protection for all information stored on laptops and PCs in an easy, convenient, and cost-effective way. Check out our convenient and cost-effective computer security software for Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

2 comments »

Posted in Computer security

Tags: