355 Shopping Days Left

After just being bombarded with the endless options of gifts for your loved ones, a simple reminder that the next blitz is just around the corner.  And you are a target.  2011 started relatively tame for breaches but when hacktivism and a few other entities decided to take hold, it became a massive year for lost data.  From retail to healthcare to government to schools to financial institutions – no one was immune.  Household names like Sony, RSA, Lockheed and Sega were all hit.   Privacy Rights Clearinghouse reports that 535 security breaches in 2011 exposed 30 million sensitive records to...

The Top 10, Top Predictions for 2012

Around this time of year, almost everyone and their brother put out their annual predictions for the coming year.  So instead of coming up with my own, I figured I’d simply regurgitate what many others are expecting to happen.  Security Predictions 2012 & 2013 - The Emerging Security Threat – SANS talks Custom Malware, IPv6, ARM hacking and Social Media. Top 7 Cybersecurity Predictions for 2012 - From Stuxnet to Sony, a number of cyberattacks emerged in 2011 that experts have predicted for quite some time.  Webroot’s top seven...

Our Identity Crisis

As as kid, my mom would constantly remind me that I was a Hawaiian Prince – a direct descendant of King Kamehameha’s grandparents and the Kekaulike (23rd Moi of Maui) line.  I was born in Hawaii but grew up on the East Coast so as a kid, I was embarrassed to be of Hawaiian Royalty since it was different from the typical ethnic groups of the New England states but that was/is Who I Am.  Of course as I got older I like being 254th in line to the Hawaiian throne…if it was still a sovereign kingdom.  Your identity is...

Hackers Hit Vacation Spots

Just when you were having all that fun running around the waterpark and playing those arcade games comes news that the card processing system of Vacationland Vendors Inc., a Wisconsin Dells firm that supplies arcade games and installs vending machines, was breached.  From the notice on their website, they say, ‘Vacationland Vendors recently discovered that an unauthorized person wrongfully accessed certain parts of the point of sales systems that Vacationland Vendors uses to process credit and debit transactions at the Wilderness Resorts.’  Up to 40,000 debit or credit cards that were used in the arcades any time between December 2008...

Audio White Paper - Application Security in the Cloud with BIG-IP ASM

Application threats are constantly evolving. Recent high-profile Internet attacks on organizations like HBGary, RSA, WikiLeaks, Google, Comodo, and others prove that no one is immune. Anyone could be a target, and perpetrators are extremely organized, skilled, and well-funded. Culprits are often better trained than the IT staff deployed to thwart the attacks, which are targeted, elaborate, and aggressive—not to mention creative. The attacks are multi-layered and constant, and seek not only to deface a website, but to steal valuable data. Customer data, intellectual property, state secrets, SSL certificates, and other proprietary, highly sensitive information are the top targets.  Whether critical...

Security Never Takes a Vacation

We’ve all seen the auto-out-of-office replies, ‘Thanks for your message but I’m out until I return – contact my boss/subordinate/someone else if you need or want anything.’  If you’ve emailed me over the last couple weeks, you’ve seen a similar note.  I took some time off, then participated in F5’s awesome Agility Conference for partners and customers and then took a few more days off.  I am challenged, like many of us, to avoid work, recharge and let the brain-drain occur while ‘out of the office.’  As humans, we need to escape from our daily grind to give the mind,...

Protection from Latest Network and Application Attacks

We offer a lot of webinars at F5 and this is one I recently presented to some partners. As I’ve mentioned, security attacks are moving “up the stack."  90% of security investments are focused on network security, however, 75% of the attacks are focused at the application layer.  Plus the average loss of revenue per hour for a layer 7 DDoS attack is approximately $220,000.  Modern DoS attacks are distributed, diverse and cross the chasm that divides network components from application infrastructure. A unified application delivery platform with multi-layer visibility is the best way to detect and mitigate multi-layer attacks. ...

Custom Code for Targeted Attacks

Botnets?  Old school.  Spam?  So yesterday.  Phishing?  Don’t even bother…well, on second thought.  Spaghetti hacking like spaghetti marketing, toss it and see what sticks, is giving way to specific development of code (or stealing other code) to breach a particular entity.  In the past few weeks, giants like Sony, Google, Citibank, Lockheed and others have fallen victim to serious intrusions.  The latest to be added to that list: The IMF – International Monetary Fund.  IMF is an international, intergovernmental organization which oversees the global financial system.  First created to help stabilize the global economic system, they oversee exchange rates and...

And The Hits Keep Coming

In case you missed this over the long weekend, a few more notable names were compromised in recent weeks.  A few weeks ago I wrote about how the Big Attacks are Back and it sure seems like the hits keep coming.  First, last Friday, Lockheed Martin said that earlier in the week, they detected that someone was trying to break into their network through the VPN.  Lockheed is a huge military contractor providing fighter jets, spy satellites and other military and intelligence equipment for the US and other government entities.  They are also known for Skunk Works or their Advanced...

Unplug Everything!

Just kidding…partially.  Have you seen the latest 2011 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report?  It is chock full of data about breaches, vulnerabilities, industry demographics, threats and all the other internet security terms that make the headlines.  It is an interesting view into cybercrime and like last year, there is also information and analysis from the US Secret Service, who arrested more than 1200 cybercrime suspects in 2010.  One very interesting note from the Executive Summary is that while the total number of records compromised has steadily gone down – ‘08: 361 million, ‘09: 144 million, ‘10: 4 million – the...