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Issue
October 2006
In this month's issue of our Security Watch Newsletter we update you on some
of the latest happenings at BH Consulting, highlight a study on poor passwords,
discuss the impact of PABX hacking, Ireland's new biometric passport is launched and
provide some interesting news stories from around the world..
About BH Consulting
BH Consulting was founded in answer to demands for an independent consulting
firm to assist clients gain a competitive edge by achieving IT Operational
excellence in deploying, managing and securing their IT infrastructure. With
over 20 year’s experience, we provide you with access to in-depth expertise,
experience and technical know-how. Backed with our quality processes and
commitment to deliver, BH Consulting provides clients with quality solutions at
cost effective rates.
 Support
Focus Ireland
If you have found any items in our
Security Watch Newsletter to be of use to you we ask that you
make a donation to
Focus Ireland who
work tirelessly supporting the homeless throughout Ireland. Focus Ireland
aims to advance the right of people-out-of-home to live in a place they call
home through quality services, research, and advocacy. The objectives of
Focus Ireland are to respond to the needs of people out-of-home and those at
risk of becoming homeless, through a range of appropriate high quality services,
to provide emergency transitional and long-term accommodation for people
out-of-home, to campaign and lobby for the rights of people out-of-home
and the prevention of homelessness. No sum is too small and all is
put to excellent use.
BH CONSULTING NEWS
BH Consulting To Address NITEs
Seminar
This year the 5th annual National IT & eSecurity Summit takes place at the IMI
Conference Centre on the 8th and 9th of November. Brian Honan will be
giving a talk on "Improving Security - Incident Response". Further details
of the conference is available
here.
Security Watch Blog Launching in
November.
Through Brian Honan's work as European Editor for the SANS Institutes
NewsBites newsletter there are many interesting stories and issues
that we come across and feel may be of interest to our readers. However,
due to the timing of our newsletter some of these stories are outdated or may
not make the monthly newsletter. To this end BH Consulting will be
launching BH Consulting's Security Watch Blog over the coming weeks. This
will enable us to keep you more regularly informed with what is happening with
BH Consulting, the area of information security within Ireland and indeed the
rest of the world. It will also allow you to provide us with more timely
feedback on the topics and areas of most interest to you. Keep an eye on
our website to see when the Blog is launched.
Brian Honan Attended ENISA Workshop
on CERTs.
Through his work with the Department of Communications in researching how best
Ireland should establish a Computer Emergency Response Team, Brian Honan
recently attended an "invitation only"
seminar hosted by ENISA in Brussels. The
focus of the seminar was on establishing and running a Computer Emergency
Response Team and proved to be very beneficial. It is hoped the
information gathered will assist in the further development of a Computer
Emergency Response Team here in Ireland.
Brian Honan Published in InfoSecurity Today Magazine
Brian Honan has recently had an article printed in the prestigious and well
regarded
InfoSecurity Today magazine. For the latest edition Brian wrote
an article discussing whether information security has become the latest "dot
com" type opportunity for the IT industry.
BH CONSULTING WEBSITE UPDATE
We strive at BH Consulting to provide information that is
relevant and useful in securing and running your business. To this end we
provide a range of whitepapers available for download
free from our
white papers page.
The latest addition to our whitepapers is a presentation
relating to Corporate
ID Theft.
LATEST THREAT LEVELS
Get more information on the latest updates on current threats at
our online resources page;
FEATURES
Irish
Cyber Crime Forum and Survey
The second Irish Cyber Crime Forum, hosted by ISSA
Ireland and University College Dublin, was held in University College Dublin on
the 26t of October. Aside from the interesting speakers, the main topic of
interest was the launch of the first survey to focus on cyber crime within
Ireland. Most cyber crime surveys are focused on the United States or if
based on international research are too high level to be relevant to Ireland.
This means we have very little solid facts and figures for which we as
individuals, companies and indeed as a nation, can rely on to help us best focus
our resources in relation to information security. This survey will help
address the gap and we at BH Consulting would urge you to respond to the survey
as best you can. All responses are anonymous and confidential.
Details of the survey can be found at the
ISSA
Ireland website.
New Irish Biometric Passport Launched.
In line with the United States visa waiver program the new Irish
Biometric passport was launched. All new Irish passports will now be
issued with an RFID chip implanted into it which will contain an electronic
version of the information held within the passport. The information from
this RFID chip can then be read by a scanner at the customs' desk. It is
claimed this chip will make it harder to forge passports. However, there
are some concerns as to whether the information on the RFID is fully secure and
whether is can be scanned remotely by those with more nefarious means.
Both the
Silicon Republic and
The Register cover
the story. Also in case you are interested there are passport cases that
claim to prevent the RFID chip from being read remotely already
available.
PABX Hack Costs AUS$9,000
in one Week
ZDNet Australia covered a story regarding a small Sydney based company who in
one week ran up a phone bill of over
AUS$9,000 due to their phone system being
remotely hacked and used by criminals to make long distance phone calls.
The interesting point about this story is it highlights an area many companies
overlook as part of their information security, the phone system or PABX.
If you have a PABX in place how confident are you that it is secure? If
you are thinking about implementing VOIP, have you thought about security?
A
Worm in your Apple?
Two stories to remind you to ensure you have the proper controls in place to
manage what devices can be attached to your network. Recently Apple
admitted to shipping some of their video iPods
preloaded with a Windows worm, while McDonalds in Japan
recalled 10,000 MP3 players pre-infected with
the QQPass Trojan. A number of lessons need to be taken from these
stories, apart from the risk of corporate data being copied onto these type of
devices, they can also quite easily introduce a virus into your network and no
matter what the source always scan for viruses.
Weak Passwords leave Networks at risk.
A recent
study conducted in the City of London
highlighted one third of those surveyed use weak passwords. Many of those
surveyed work for financial institutions which one would expect would have high
levels of protection regarding the data they hold. However, all these
protections can be undermined if users do not maintain and use strong passwords.
There are numerous techniques and tools available that can help implement
stronger . If protecting the information on your network is a concern for
you, perhaps you should conduct your own password audit and look at the
technologies available to help you enforce strong authentication and passwords.
Even all the more so given that this
story highlights an increase of 31% in the cost
impact of a security compromise.
FREE SECURITY SCAN
In partnership with
Qualys, BH Consulting
are offering a for a free Network Security Scan so you can check how healthy
your network is. To find out more about what this service can do for you, visit
our free
Network Security Scan.
Alternatively contact
us or visit our website to get more details on our
risk assessment service.
This issue of Security Watch is being brought to you by BH Consulting.
If you have found this issue to be of use please support our drive to raise funds
for
Focus Ireland.
Each
Security Watch eNewsletter, and the special Security Alert issues, are produced
independently by the Windows IT Pro Custom Media Group and is distributed by
various Microsoft security partners. Each eNewsletter contains up-to-date
information about security strategies, technologies, and alerts. Each Security
Alert contains the latest information about security threats.
Additional news courtesy of
Silicon Republic,
Cnet,
Silicon and
Zdnet
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