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Posts Tagged ‘AlertSec Xpress’

The casino city latest victim of identity theft – 13 California residents face indictment

April 10th, 2012

Identity theft at the Casino city of Las Vegas. Suspects behind bars

13 California based residents are behind the identity theft scheme that came to light in Las Vegas recently. This scheme had employed electronic devices in Las Vegas and it gathered information from credit cards and debit cards bit by bit.

The report in detail

The incident took place on 13th March in Las Vegas and the indictment was then handed over in U.S district court but was sealed till Tuesday so that the thieves could be arrested. The crime involved installation of “skimmers” into exterior door readers at JP Morgan Chase bank branches around the valley. The defendants also used the pinholes on the ATM pin pads and fixed a camera on it to access the account holders’ personal identification number (PIN). Usually all ATMs are open for customers after the bank timings also to avail the ATM services. Anyone can swipe the bank or debit cards to enter the ATM cabin.

The thieves obtained account holders data, including account numbers, names and card expiration dates. They further took undue advantage of credit cards as they had their respective PINs with them.

The U.S. Attorney’s Statement

“We are working vigilantly with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners to identify, arrest and prosecute criminals who are stealing personal information and using it to manufacture counterfeit credit and debit cards,” Bogden said. “If you are involved in this type of criminal activity and are convicted, you are going to federal prison.”

Actual incident

The data skimmed from debit and credit cards was used at JP Morgan Chase ATMs on Sky Pointe Drive, West Flamingo Road, West Craig Road, West Sahara Avenue, South Fort Apache, Camino Al Norte, East Charleston Boulevard and South Rainbow Boulevard.

According to the indictment, the thefts had started from November 2009. The indictment does not state the exact amount of loss.

The suspects are said to be in the age group ranging from 21 to 44. Some of them are charged with conspiracy, some with aggravated identity theft. On Tuesday six suspects were arrested in California, out of which five were already in custody for other charges. And more two suspects are yet to be arrested as per the source.

Court appearances of these suspects are being scheduled.

Protect your identity with Alertsec

The above news items clearly shows how important it is to protect your identity these days, especially your e-identity i.e. digital identity. Credit cards, ATM cards, debit cards etc are more vulnerable than you know. Comapnies like Alertsec are here to protect your identities.

Alertsec Xpress uses Check Point Full Disk Encryption software. The software encrypts and decrypts data on the fly making it transparent to the user and to applications. One of the issues with traditional disk encryption software is that access time increases. In independent tests, Check Point Full Disk Encryption delivered the best performance results when compared with other major products on the market, with less than 2% degradation in disk performance.

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Posted in Computer security, Hackers, Hard Disk, Identity and Information loss, computer security software, identity theft

Tags: AlertSec Xpress ATM ATM card Automated teller machine Check Point Full Disk Encryption Credit card Debit card disk encryption identitytheft JPMorgan Chase Personal identification number

Data Breach and Hacktivism- A major threat faced by today’s organizations

March 28th, 2012

Verizon divulges deep into the Hacktivism world

A very shocking news but real fact came to light today when Verizon reported that hacktivism was responsible for the majority of stolen records in their annual data breach report. However, hacktivism is accounted for only 3 percent of the total 855 recorded attacks among several countries.

Emerging details

Hactivism has increased worldwide since last year. According to Verizon, last year 58 percent data theft was due to hactivism. Hactivists attribute a very small percentage of group of people but they are proving a major threat than criminals. Criminals usually target small thefts that cannot be detected fast and easily. According to the annual data breach report it was found that from a total of 174 million records that comprised of individual database entries and documents compromised in the 855 incidents, hacktivists had a share of 100 million records.

Professional criminals target smaller companies at large as they are yet to invest in security whereas large companies have already done so. Also it was found that hacking incidents were aimed at social and political objectives rather than aiming at financial gain.

The report stated that breaches were also noticed in India, US and 34 more countries and nearly 70 percent of those originated in Eastern Europe.

The statement given by Verizon

The latest trend distinguishes the past several years trend, when majority of the attacks were carried out with the aim of financial gain. It was also observed that seventy-nine percent of breaches that took place were opportunistic and ninety seven percent of them could have certainly been avoided. Data breaches were mainly caused due to external attacks while target being the outsiders. It included organised crime, activist groups, former employees, lone hackers and even organisations sponsored by foreign governments.

How to avoid data theft

In earlier times, data theft was related to website defacement or denial of service. Now the reports state otherwise. The problem always has been the detection of data thefts. Many of them go unnoticed. Some are not detected in the first attempt. Majority of data breach attacks are not recorded.

Verizon has verified its data breaches from various sources like the US Secret Service (USSS), the UK’s Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU), the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU), the Irish Reporting & Information Security Service (IRISSCERT), the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Irish Reporting & Information Security Service (IRISSCERT).

The EU plans to appoint a Data Breach Directive in the near future which will be active 24 x 7 for the reporting of consumer data as a legal requirement across the 27-nation economic area.

The organisations also need to speed up in protecting the vulnerable security system that cause data breach frequently.

Encryption software offered by Alertsec!

There are no short cuts to data security in any organization. This news stresses the need for data protection applications. In an incident which highlights the need of Data encryption software and recovery software, the threat could have simply been reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data. Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model.

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Posted in Computer security, Data Protection, computer security software, data breach, data encryption, laptop theft

Tags: AlertSec Xpress Australian Federal Police data breach Data theft Encryption Hackers Hacktivism information security United States Secret Service Verizon Verizon Communications

NASA employee’s laptop stolen, sensitive data at stake

March 21st, 2012

Kennedy Space Center experiences laptop theft

Where and how was the laptop stolen?

The laptop theft of NASA’s employee took place outside the home of the employee’s car where he had left his laptop. This theft has caused 2300 employees of Kennedy space centre to suffer. The laptop contained personal information like employee names, race, and national origin, and gender, date of birth, contact information, college affiliation and grade-point average. It also included their Social Security numbers which obviously are at stake. A human resources office reported on March 5 and the theft took place at Orange County where the employee is residing. Officials said that there is low probability of exploitation of personal information of Kennedy space centre employees.

NASA is providing affected employees with one year’s worth of free cyber, identity, and credit monitoring and recovery services whose personal information was in the stolen laptop. Kennedy Space Centre spokesman Allard Beutel said initially the numbers of affected employees was predicted much lower than in real. Even though lots of data was stored on the agency servers, the employee’s laptop also contained more sensitive information and security numbers.

This theft has definitely opened eyes of all IT security systems and they are taking additional efforts towards data protection, encryption of devices. Officials said that they will be reviewing all IT security policies and practices to avoid such incidents in future. All the laptops including sensitive and general data at KSC will be encrypted by September 2012. However, this was planned and was going to be implemented before the theft took place.

NASA officials had a hard time ‘cleaning their act’. Any data has the possibility of being hacked if not encrypted properly. Lost laptops or loss of any electronic system that contains sensitive information could prove as the huge loss for any business. There are many methods to protect data on laptops such as alarms, locks or visual deterrents. It is always advisable to have a backup of data on servers, and to delete the sensitive information on laptops when the work is over.

We all are aware about the benefits of encrypting devices. Encryption can be done to a specific file or a whole disk. It ensures us peace of mind. We feel relaxed as our sensitive information is secured. Encryption also provides unauthorised access protection to our data. Encryption may be useless if authentication is not there. Some corporations need to pay huge fines if the laptops stolen are not encrypted. If the data stolen is very sensitive and related to business, it will cost you a lot for your business. Encryption will ensure that even if your laptop gets stolen, the data cannot be hacked by the best hackers also. After all, confidentiality is what we all need.

Try Alertsec

Alertsec, a reliable name in the world of data security is guiding organizations in their data protection policy. Alertsec Xpress is powered by Check Point Full Disk Encryption – the global leader in data encryption software with millions of users worldwide! For years, Check Point has been protecting more PCs, laptops, PDAs, smart phones and removable storage devices than anyone else in the world.

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Posted in Computer security, Data Protection, Encryption, Hackers, Identity and Information loss, Security Flaw, computer security software, data breach, data encryption, full disk encryption, identity theft, laptop encryption, laptop theft

Tags: AlertSec Xpress Check Point Computer security disk encryption Encryption Information sensitivity Kennedy Space Center laptop theft NASA Social Security number

New EU data regime slammed by IBM security chief

March 14th, 2012

Image representing IBM as depicted in CrunchBase

IBM security chief not happy with new EU security laws

It is not true when it is said that only giant corporations become a victim of data breach as they deal in large amount of data. The real picture is worse. The reality is that small and medium-sized businesses are not spared either when it comes to getting hacked. Their data is equally insecure and they need to strengthen their security policies otherwise one day they can be in big trouble. Giants like Google, Facebook and Microsoft as well as thousands of midsized companies will be affected due to new laws by European Union.

Today’s data breach story

Today’s story throws light on the vulnerability of small and medium sized businesses. Latest reforms of European Union protection law have been slammed by the IBM security chief, Joe Anthony. Joe Anthony is the director of security, risk and compliance product management at IBM. According to the new law, the data breach should be reported within 24 hours and any organisation failing to comply will be charged heavy fines. The companies who break the law will have penalty of up to 2 percent global turnover. IBM chief criticized this law as according to him it is difficult for any company to report the breach in 24 hours. He said the time period is too short to take any specific actions. To detect a data breach it is very important to have sufficient time as the breach may have taken place in more than one application. In small and medium sized businesses tracking the breach in 24 hours is a matter of concern.

Thus, organisations need to adapt automated security systems which will track data breaches faster than manual processes. The automated security systems will have checks on database access issues. So that whenever a data breach takes place, the automated system will show a list of people who had access to that particular database and for what reason. Only then the short period of 24 hours can be achieved to report the data breach. A data breach is very important and it needs to be examined rightly.

Changes made to European Union protection laws are in developing stage and need to be approved. The proposed changes will be approved by European Union member states and European Parliament. Twenty Seven member states need to implement it when it gets approved. European Union member states will have to follow these new regulation laws. Their aim is to ensure high data protection for personal data. It will give users assurance of their personal data. The approval and implementation will take a period of two years. Till then let’s wait and watch the implementation of these new laws.

How will Alertsec help big and small organizations?

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

Organisations, especially corporate giants, have to have an information security policy in place that proves they have taken necessary steps and measures to safeguard the information they gathered. If these policies are not adhered to, the regulators may prosecute.

Alertsec Xpress is used by organizations that have recognized the need to protect their information. Customers range from single-user sole traders and consultants to multinational companies with a large number of offices around the globe. Over 4 million users worldwide use Alertsec Xpress’s Check Point Full Disk Encryption

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Posted in Computer security, Data Protection, Hackers, Hard Disk, computer security software, data breach, data encryption, identity theft

Tags: alertsec AlertSec Xpress Check Point data breach European Parliament European Union Facebook Google IBM microsoft security

Scottish charity reprimanded for USB data breach by ICO

March 13th, 2012

2 USB sticks containing mental health data stolen from Enable Scotland

Data sticks or USB drives look so small but carry so much of weight, don’t they? They carry a lot of data and if lost, are difficult to recover due to their size. Thus storing data on a USB drive and carrying it around is very easy, a perfect example of ‘advanced technology’ but what if they get stolen? What if data on a USB drive is compromised?

Today’s post deals with data breach at a Scottish charity wherein their 2 USB drives (memory sticks) were stolen.

The story

A Scottish charity has been admonished for not encrypting the USB device (memory sticks) by ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office). These data sticks belonged to Enable Scotland and contained data of people with mental health issues, their addresses, and date of births which has now been stolen by thieves. The device was stolen from employee’s home that contained information of 101 people. According to the Data Protection Act rule the data should be erased after it has been uploaded on servers to avoid such data breach. It should also be in practice to knowledge the home workers how to handle such secured information in the form of memory sticks that are not routinely encrypted. Enable Scotland has admitted that the data stolen was not explicit yet it contained names of people who are connected with this charity for mental health issues. They had failed to delete it after their use. During an investigation, it was also found that mobile devices were not encrypted too that are used for storing sensitive information.

Penalty in form of money is charged for such loss of data by any organisation but this being a charity we are not confirmed as it charities are not charged penalty in form of money. However, Enable has started working on improving their agreements and policies with Data Protection Act. They will also educate their workers on data protection procedures and ensure that their mobiles are encrypted. It is pleasing that Enable reported the breach as early as they could but the information once lost cannot be regained though.

Enable has taken a good step towards data breaches to protect their customer information. However, it should be a learning for all other charities out there to safeguard their people’s sensitive information. ICO recently handed out a fine to Cheshire East Council for emailing sensitive information to wrong recipients.

Data breaches are really a matter of great concern nowadays. The amount of data loss that is taking place is worrying and many organisations do not have hundred percent protection policies towards their employees data. It is very important that sensitive information must be secured. Routine Encryption of devices must be made mandatory to avoid such losses of data otherwise there will be no end to cases like these in near future. So that even if the data is stolen encrypted devices will ensure protection of information. Businesses should have this obligation towards their society to avoid such thefts as majority of them take place outside the corporate environment.

Your system needs Alertsec!

There are no short cuts to data security in any organization. This news stresses the need for data protection applications. In an incident which highlights the need of Data encryption software and recovery software, the threat could have simply been reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data. Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model.