BH Consulting Security Watch Newsletter

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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.

Brian Honan to Chair Roundtable Discussion on Security with Bruce Schneier.
Our Principal Consultant, Brian Honan, has been given the honour to chair an upcoming roundtable discussion hosted by the Institute of International and European Affairs on risk and security at which Bruce Schneier, Chief Security Technology Officer of BT Group, will address. Bruce Schneier is well regarded within the Information Security industry as a thought provoking analyst. His Cryptogram newsletter and Blog is subscribed to by many tens of thousands of readers around the world and he has produced a number of best selling insightful books on information security.

Keeping Data safe at work
The Sunday Independent on the 7th of September ran a piece in their business supplement on what companies should be doing to protect the data stored on various devices such as PCs and laptops. Brian Honan is quoted in the article and highlight that companies need to develop their data classification and handling policy and educate their staff in same before rushing out to solve the problem using technology alone. Brian highlighted that technology is only part of the solution and that people and processes are equally, if not, more important.

Cyber Crime Seminar Held in Dublin

Global Security Week, in conjunction with BH Consulting and Vigitrust, held a free seminar on the theme of “Cyber Crime – Don’t Become a Victim” on the 10^th of September 2008.

The theme this year is intended to highlight how businesses and individuals can become victims of Cyber Crime and what steps they can take to protect themselves from this rapidly growing crime. In light of recent criminal attacks against various organisations in Ireland, the timing of the seminar could not come at a more opportune time.

Detective Sergeant John Finan from An Garda Siochana's Computer Crime Unit and Owen O'Connor from Security Careers provided two excellent presentations. Some of the key messages from the talks were;

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 free whitepapers available for download free from our white papers page.

Don't forget to visit our Security Watch Blog to keep up to date with the latest information security news.

LATEST THREAT LEVELS
Get more information on the latest updates on current threats at our online resources page;

Cyber Crime is a Real Business Issue
A recent report released by Finjan highlights that cyber crime is a growing concern for businesses of all sizes. Ninety one percent of the 1,387 IT managers surveyed consider cyber crime as a major risk to their business with 73% claiming data theft is more worrying than downtime or malware infection. What is even more interesting is that 25% of those surveyed admitted to having been the victims of cyber crime.

Estonian Government Releases Cyber Strategy Paper
The Estonian Government has released a strategy paper on enhancing cyber security. This is a very good report as we can all learn from the lessons of the cyber attacks against Estonia last year. The report makes for interesting reading and yet it is still sad to see that governments and many organisations only take computer security seriously after they have suffered a major attack.

ENISA Publishes New White Paper On Security Awareness
Over the summer Brian Honan worked on a project with the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) to produce a white paper “Obtaining Support and Funding From Senior Management While Planning an Awareness Initiative“. This is a very important paper as one of the most important things to ensure the success of any information security awareness programme is to have the appropriate support and funding from your senior management. If you are considering rolling out an Information Security Awareness programme then you should have a look at this white paper to ensure that you get the appropriate support from your senior management. The paper is now available on the ENISA website.

Beware of internet registry scam
A number of Irish businesses with registered .ie domains have received a letter from a company calling itself Internet Register Ireland asking that the company sign up for a listing in their directory. A listing in the directory costs €958 per year for three years and has no affiliation with the Irish Domain Registry. This has been identified as a scam and companies are warned to ignore the letter. More details are available from the IEDR website.

ENISA Updates Security Awareness Guide

Two years ago ENISA published an excellent guide on how to raise information security awareness within your organisations. A new version of the guide is now available and well worth the time taken to download and read it. Security awareness can be one of the most effective defence measures you can invest in. Once you have created a culture of security within your organisation and trained users on how to identify potential threats your greatly reduce the ability of attackers to breach your defences.

FREE SECURITY SCAN
In partnership with Qualys, BH Consulting are offering 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.

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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