Tag: Security
Who is Responsible for Internet Security: A Response
Basically you have the Australian courts who want to place the onus on the shoulders of end-users. Others want to put the responsibility on Operating System or Application vendors due to their security holes. Finally, you have the Mail System operators or Network connectivity providers (ISPs) who don't take sufficient measures to combat open relays or botnets where infected machines act like SMTP proxies. (Jul 26, 2010)
My spam is different from your spam!
The type of spam you receive depends on many things, including your behavior on the net, how you use your email address, your position in a company and much more. As a software company executive I receive a very particular stream, one that is probably very different than what most people receive. Well, at least that's what our Security Operations team tells me. (Jul 22, 2010)
Who’s responsible for Internet Security?
A couple of stories in the news today caught my attention because they have very opposite perspectives on tackling cybercrime and Internet security. First, the Australian government is thinking of making home computer users responsible for security1. They’re contemplating legislation to force users to install anti-virus programs and firewalls on their home computers before being allowed to connect to the Internet. (Jun 23, 2010)
Why Your Business Needs Policy Management
Instead of being reactive to scandals and managing them after the fact, organizations should take a proactive role and protect data leakage before it happens, to prevent the loss of secrets that are revenue generating. However, most companies are still under-protected and focus their security budgets on compliance and protection of custodial data (customer personal information) rather than internal information such as corporate/product strategy, or financial reports which directly affect the bottom line. (Jun 17, 2010)
Honest, I don’t want an email security appliance!
Vendors have their own very special reasons for pushing email security appliances, instead of virtual machines or straight software installations. You may find that their reasons do not always align with your own. (Jun 14, 2010)
May Email Security News: New Undersea Cables Feed African Botnets
Email Security Industry news from May 2010 with commentary (May 31, 2010)
Interesting question from a customer: “Why should we block .EXEs?”
The majority of phishing attempts with drive-by-downloads try to entice you to download EXE files and run them locally. EXE files should always be blocked. You can open certain files on a case-by-case basis and in a very controlled fashion, but that’s the extent of it. (May 26, 2010)
SURBL: The catch of the day
There it is again: another email in your Inbox from an obscure financial institution, requesting that you click on the available link and be redirected to an unknown, unsecured website. Prompted for personal details or your credit card number, you hesitate to enter this information thinking something seems fishy. (May 19, 2010)
Here come the spam police
The German courts may have just opened the floodgates. Their top criminal court ruled this week that home wireless users can be held responsible for not password-protecting their wireless connections. If the unprotected connection is used for illegal file downloads, the owner can be fined up to 100 Euros (currently $126). (May 17, 2010)
Facebook or Faceblock? Facebook implementing their own ‘email security’?
Facebook is coming under scrutiny (again!), this time about their email scanning policies. Most of you are probably in the email security industry and are well aware that any email security solution will scan a message to divert or block spam, phishing, etc. (May 12, 2010)
April Email Security News: McAfee update error impacts many systems
A summary of links to articles that I have found interesting in the last few weeks. Includes my own commentary. (Apr 30, 2010)
Six items often overlooked when purchasing an email security solution
As discussed in an earlier post , the battle against spam is an ongoing one and requires you to do your due diligence when selecting an email security solution to protect one of your business’ most important assets: email. (Apr 26, 2010)
Why can’t you stop this spam?
Maybe you’ve seen more spam hitting your Inbox over the past couple of months and wondering, “Why am I paying for filtering? This stuff is obviously spam – why can’t you guys stop it?” The main challenges of being in the spam filtering business are dealing with clients’ expectations on the one hand, and the sheer size of the spam/malware machine on the other. (Apr 16, 2010)
Anti-Social Networking
Web 2.0 is leading us to operate and collaborate more through our web browsers than ever before. Consequently, sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace are being used more aggressively for everything from chatting to marketing. Spammers are loving this. (Apr 07, 2010)
March Email Security News
A summary of links to recent articles that I have found interesting in the last few weeks. Includes my own commentary. (Apr 02, 2010)
Why you shouldn’t cut your email security costs
These days, running a business without email security exposes you to huge, unnecessary risks and costs. What is the cost of security? It should not have a price tag. Imagine having to go through thousands of emails (mostly spam) every day, just to make sure an important message does not get deleted. (Mar 29, 2010)
Looked at our site or downloaded our software? Then allow us to harass you!
Some companies take their marketing tools a little too far. Download their software for a trial, or even just visit their website, and you just opened the door to daily email and phone calls from aggressive sales staff pushing their wares. I know the market is competitive, but can we please let the customer make their decision in peace? (Mar 12, 2010)
Battle of the Newsletters: Marketing 1, Security 0
While working on a False Positive (yes, it can happen to the best of us), I was stunned to discover how marketing people can bend email security rules. (Feb 22, 2010)
Do you have what it takes to be an Email Security Reseller?
So, you want to be an email security reseller? Sure, here's the form, here's the discount you'll get, here's where you sign...Not so fast! (Feb 10, 2010)
Less Linux, more Windows
I’ve always been a pro-Linux type of guy. I started using Unix back in 1992 (SunOS) and then onto Slackware, Red Hat, Ubuntu. Linux offered so many more features, security, power to do anything and a reliability Windows couldn’t dream of at the time. Linux was a true multitasking OS, had a firewall, and all internet clients and servers one may want or need: pop3, smtp, http, ftp, ssh. All these were virtually impossible to do on MS-DOS or Windows, and I’m not even talking about the various crashes and ridiculous uptimes of the early Microsoft platforms. Since then, and up until a few months ago, it’s always been clear to me: reliability and security on Linux; office work, graphical user interface and leisure on Windows. (Feb 05, 2010)
