Cybersecurity

European Data Breaches Have Resulted in Loss of 645 Million Records Since 2004

A first-time study of publically-reported data breaches in the 28 European Union member countries, plus Norway and Switzerland, conducted by the Central European University's Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) has found that between 2004 and 2014 the continent's organizations suffered 229 incidents covering 227 million personal records.  more

DNSSEC Workshop Streaming Live From ICANN 51 On Wednesday, Oct 15

Want to learn about the state of DNSSEC usage in North America? Or what is new in DNS monitoring? Or where DNSSEC fits into the plans of operating systems? Or how DANE is being used to bring a higher level of security to email? All those questions and much more will be discussed at the DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 51 happening on Wednesday, October 15, 2014, from 8:30 am to 2:45 pm Pacific Daylight Time (PDT, which is UTC-7). more

.trust Technical Policy Launch

Whenever I examine the technical elements of the various Internet security certifications and standards that organisations are clamouring to achieve compliance against, I can't help but feel that in too many cases those businesses are prioritising the wrong things and wasting valuable resources. They may as well be following a WWI field guide on how to keep cavalry horses nourished and bayonets polished in a world of stealth aircraft and dirty bombs. more

Some Observations from NANOG 62

NANOG 62 was held at Baltimore from the 6th to the 9th October. These are my observations on some of the presentations that occurred at this meeting. .. One of the more memorable sides in this presentation was a reference to "map" drawn by Charles Minard in 1869 describing the statistics relating to the Napoleonic military campaign in Russia, and the subsequent retreat. more

If Compliance Were an Olympic Sport

It probably won't raise any eyebrows to know that for practically every penetration tester, security researcher, or would-be hacker I know, nothing is more likely to make their eyes glaze over and send them to sleep faster than a discussion on Governance, Risk, and Compliance (i.e. GRC); yet the dreaded "C-word" (Compliance) is a core tenet of modern enterprise security practice. more

Privacy and Security - Five Objectives

It has been a very busy period in the domain of computer security. With "shellshock", "heartbleed" and NTP monlink adding to the background of open DNS resolvers, port 445 viral nasties, SYN attacks and other forms of vulnerability exploits, it's getting very hard to see the forest for the trees. We are spending large amounts of resources in reacting to various vulnerabilities and attempting to mitigate individual network attacks, but are we making overall progress? What activities would constitute "progress" anyway? more

Web Encryption - It’s Not Just for E-Commerce, Anymore

Last week, I re-tweeted Cloudflare's announcement that they are providing universal SSL for their customers. I believe the announcement is a valuable one for the state of the open Internet for a couple of reasons: First, there is the obvious -- they are doubling the number of websites on the Internet that support encrypted connections. And, hopefully, that will prompt even more sites/hosting providers/CDNs to get serious about supporting encryption, too. Web encryption -- it's not just for e-commerce, anymore. more

Cigarette Smuggling and Cyber Security: Low-Tech Crimes Fund High-Tech Threats

You may not connect the cheap cigarettes sold under the counter (or out of a trunk, bodega or by a street vendor) with the mysterious charges on your credit card that you don't remember making or the cash that has, somehow, just disappeared from your bank account. You also may not connect that website selling cheap cigarettes made in second and third world countries with Shellshock or whatever the fashionably scary cyber-threat of the day is when you're reading this. more

A Look at the Security Collapse in the HTTPS Market

While in recent years, HTTPS has become integral part of protecting social, political, and economic activities online, widely reported security incidents -- such as DigiNotar's breach, Apple's #gotofail, and OpenSSL's Heartbleed -- have exposed systemic security vulnerabilities of HTTPS to a global audience. more

Credit Card Breaches a Salutary Lesson for DNSSEC Adoption

Maintaining an 150 year old house requires two things, a lot of time and a lot of trips to the hardware store. Since the closest hardware store to my house is Home Depot, it is rare that a weekend passes without at least one trip to Home Depot. So now in the wake of the Home Depot data breach I am through no fault of my own in a situation where any or all of the bank cards I use regularly could be cancelled if the issuer decides they might be compromised. And this is not the first time this has happened to me this year. more

Watch ION Belfast / UKNOF Live Tuesday, Sept 9, for IPv6, DNSSEC, BGP Security and More

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014, you have a great opportunity to watch live a very packed agenda full of great sessions about IPv6, DNSSEC, routing/BGP security and other components of Internet infrastructure streaming out of the UKNOF / ION Belfast event in Belfast, UK. All of the sessions can be seen live. more

Fear of Disaster: 5 Tips to Help Enterprises Cope

IT disasters can strike anywhere, anytime. In 1983, a faulty Soviet warning system nearly precipitated World War III -- the system claimed five missiles were en route from the U.S. Only quick thinking by Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov saved the day when he realized the United States would never launch so few warheads. And in 2004, a private contractor working with the British Child Support Agency (CSA) suffered a glitch that overpaid 1.9 million people and underpaid 700,000. more

The Next New Media: Typewriters and Handwritten Letters

Who would have thought that typewriters and handwritten letters would ever be back in fashion? But back in 2013 it was reported that Russia was buying large quantities of typewriters. When this was further investigated the country denied that this was for security reasons. Since the Snowden revelations there has been a further rush on typewriters, both by government officials and by a range of, mainly corporate, businesses. more

Call for Nominations: M3AAWG J. D. Falk Award Seeks Stewards of a Better Online World

Anyone seeking to honor a groundbreaking contribution toward a better online world should submit a nomination for the 2014 M3AAWG J. D. Falk Award. Presented to people whose work on specific projects made the Internet a safer, more collaborative, more inclusive place, the J. D. Falk Award has recognized leaders and pioneers who saw elements of the online experience that needed improvement and took action to fix them.  more

Six Approaches to Creating an Enterprise Cyber Intelligence Program

As few as seven years ago, cyber-threat intelligence was the purview of a small handful of practitioners, limited mostly to only the best-resourced organizations - primarily financial institutions that faced large financial losses due to cyber crime - and defense and intelligence agencies involved in computer network operations. Fast forward to today, and just about every business, large and small, is dependent on the Internet in some way for day-to-day operations, making cyber intelligence a critical component of a successful business plan. more