November was a busy month for security stories. The month kicked off with more stories of massive security patches from both Microsoft and Apple leaving me to wonder when the patching madness will ever end. Windows 7 was found to have a flaw that allows denial of service attacks. Internet Explorer v7 (IE7) even made it into the news with the latest vulnerability, but I question efforts to patch an aging application, why not just upgrade or use Firefox? If they aren’t willing to upgrade, do people really think they will patch IE7?
Without further delay, here are the stories that caught my eye in November: Continue reading this post…
More companies than ever are looking at alternatives to blacklist antivirus. It isn’t hard to see why. Rampant botnets, endless patching, and signature distribution that simply can’t keep up with the threat are just a few of the reasons why IT and security professionals are looking for viable alternatives to protect their endpoints. Even Gartner group has said it is time to start over on desktop security. Continue reading this post…
I came across an interesting post on the darkREADING website yesterday titled PCI More Of A ‘Check-Box’ Than Security For Most Retailers. Particularly interesting was the following excerpt:
Nearly 80 percent of retailers and organizations that handle credit card transactions have been hit with a data breach, but more than 70 percent still don’t consider security strategic to their operations, according to a new report released today.
This apparent incongruity has more to do with organizations accepting a certain level of risk with doing business on the Internet, says Brian Contos, chief security strategist at Imperva, which commissioned the 2009 PCI DSS Compliance Survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute.
“Roughly 30 percent take [PCI security] seriously,” Contos says. “And the others see it as a check box.”
Despite the fact that 80 percent of retailers have experienced a data breach, only 70 percent consider security strategic to their operations and only 30 percent take PCI security seriously. The question is, is this an indictment of the retailers or the PCI standards themselves? Continue reading this post…