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A group of federal agencies and private organizations, including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, has released a set of guidelines defining the top 20 things organizations should do to prevent cyberattacks. The Consensus Audit Guidelines (CAG) describe the 20 key actions, referred to as security controls, that organizations should take to defend their computer systems. The controls are expected to become baseline best practices for computer security, following further public- and private-sector review. CAG is being led by John Gilligan, formerly the CIO for both the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Department of Energy, and a member of the Obama transition team dealing with IT in the Department of Defense and various intelligence agencies. "We are in a war, a cyberwar," Gilligan said on a media conference call. "And the federal government is one of many large organizations that are being targeted. Our ability at present to detect and defend against these attacks is really quite weak in many cases." Borrowing an analogy he attributed to an unnamed federal CIO, Gilligan said, "We're bleeding badly and we really need triage and we need to focus on things that will keep this patient alive." The CAG initiative represents part of a larger effort, backed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., to implement recommendations from the CSIS Commission report on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency.

We all like to think our privacy is absolute. But if your job involves working across borders, you'll want to talk about privacy as a matter of degree rather than as an uncompromising right. Why? Not only do you want to be seen as someone who can get things done globally, but you also may personally want to be part of advancing social objectives that are arguably as important as privacy. Have you ever had to re-architect your global rollout of PeopleSoft or Lawson because of European Union privacy concerns? Or adjust how your company offers technical support to medical products sold in Europe? Have you ever been part of acquiring a failing European company where the privacy of employee data was a final sticking point? If you've seen projects with obvious social benefit get held up by seemingly minor data-related questions, then you might have been running up against this notion of "nothing trumps privacy." It's a popular idea. The half-billion people of Europe do view privacy as a human right. And they're not the only ones. As one of the first acts of the UN, Eleanor Roosevelt and the U.S. delegation in 1948 lobbied for the global adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(UNDHR), whose Article 12 states, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation." With Europe and the UN using absolute-sounding language to describe a right to privacy, it's no wonder we have all of these delayed and downsized corporate projects. People are legitimately concerned about our sometimes reckless march into the Information Age, and they want to put some brakes on it. But does privacy trump all foes? I can think of at least six other equally important social objectives that regularly put limits on privacy: 1. Personal health. We all want to stay healthy - even when we lose the ability to communicate and give consent. Emergency-room personnel need access t

Twitter Inc. has launched a comprehensive review of the defenses in its popular social network and microblogging service after hackers hijacked the accounts of several high-profile users on Monday. In interviews this week, analysts said they were surprised that sites such as Twitter, which are potentially hot targets for hackers and phishers, had long avoided such major attacks, and thus strong scrutiny by its corporate users. Since the widely publicized hack of Twitter, analysts said they are closely watching how the site and especially its corporate customers respond to the security breach.

(PDF) Information security is a critical consideration for any organization that depends on information systems and computer networks to carry out its mission or business. It is especially important for government agencies, where the public's trust is essential. The dramatic expansion in computer interconnectivity and the rapid increase in the use of the Internet are changing the way our government, the nation, and much of the world communicate and conduct business. Without proper safeguards, they also pose enormous risks that make it easier for individuals and groups with malicious intent to intrude into inadequately protected systems and use such access to obtain sensitive information, commit fraud, disrupt operations, or launch attacks against other computer systems and networks.

The latest phishing scam on Facebook has raised the question yet again as to whether the social networking site is dropping the ball on security measures and properly responding to privacy complaints. Facebook faced consumer fraud charges was investigated by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in 2007 for allegedly responding too slowly to user complaints about harassment, pornography, or nudity from the social networking site. As a result, Facebook agreed to settlement requirement requiring it to respond to such complaints within 24 hours. But in a recent string of phishing attacks in which hackers have broken into a user's Facebook account and hit up his or her friends for money with the online chat tool, pretending to be stranded or robbed, a complaint has emerged that the privacy team at Facebook hasn't responded to users in a timely manner. Mark Neely, a Sydney-based management consultant, became aware that his Facebook account was hacked when friends called him to see if he was all right - the hacker had contacted them via Facebook chat saying that Neely had been robbed at gunpoint in London and would need them to wire him money so he could return to Australia. Neely says he filled out two online complaint forms and e-mailed the privacy team at Facebook, but it took them more than 40 hours to respond to him. In the meantime, his friends continued to call him about being contacted by the hacker. Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt disputes Neely's figure, saying it only took 30 hours to respond. "In this case, we have restored access to the account to the rightful owner, are identifying the means by which the account was compromised (likely malware), and building in technical protections in the Facebook system to address this particular type of scheme," Schnitt said

In this expert videocast, you will learn about Web 2.0 software, the threats they pose, and whether the benefits outweigh the risks. Key areas covered include the threats posed by services like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, as well as wikis and blogs. Our expert also dives into particular attack vectors and scenarios that are becoming popular, defensive policy, and technology best practices and Web 2.0 trends to monitor going forward. Speaker David Sherry CISSP, CISM - CISO, Brown University As chief information security officer of Brown University, David Sherry is charged with the development and maintenance of Brown's information technology security strategy, IT policies and best practices, security training and awareness programs, as well as ongoing risk assessment and compliance tasks. Sherry has 20 years of experience in information technology. He most recently worked at Citizens Bank where he was vice president for enterprise identity and access management, providing leadership for compliance and security governance. He had also served as Citizens' vice president for enterprise information security, overseeing the company's security operations and controls. He has taught classes at colleges in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as well as spoken on identity management strategy and implementation at industry conferences. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in business management.

In honor of this day, the California Office of Privacy Protection--the first governmental privacy office in the nation--has created a presentation which you can download from their Web site at www.privacy.ca.gov. It's called "Secure Your Computer to Protect Your Privacy," and it explains why computer owners should use Internet firewalls, install and maintain anti-virus and anti-spyware software, and keep their operating systems and applications up to date to protect themselves from malicious attacks. The state privacy office offers lots of other information on how Californians can protect themselves and their data. You can visit their Web site, call them toll-free at (866) 785-9663, or go Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. to the main San Francisco Public Library, where Joanne McNabb, the state's privacy chief, is scheduled to appear on a panel with representatives from Microsoft, Intel, the Center for Democracy and Technology, MySpace and Teen Angels. The panel is free and is part of an international effort to raise awareness about privacy practices and privacy rights

The private correspondence of millions of people who use social networking sites could be tracked and saved on a "big brother" database, under new plans being drawn up by the UK government. Ministers revealed yesterday that they were considering policing messages sent via sites such as MySpace and Facebook, alongside plans to store information about every phone call, e-mail and internet visit made by everyone in the United Kingdom. There was immediate uproar from opposition parties, privacy campaigners and security experts who said the plans were over-the-top and unworkable. There have long been proposals, following an European Union directive in the wake of the July 2005 bombings in London, for emails and internet usage to be tracked in order to guard against future terrorist attacks.

The following is an excerpt from the book The Truth About Identity Theft. In this section of Chapter 11: Social Engineering (.pdf), author Jim Stickley explains how easy it really is to hack a password. People often ask me how hard it is to hack a password. In reality, it is rare that I ever need to hack someone's password. Though there are numerous ways to gain passwords on a network and hundreds, if not thousands, of tools available to crack encrypted passwords, in the end I have found that it is far easier to simply ask for them. A perfect example of this type of attack was a medium-sized bank that I was testing recently. The bank's concern was related to the new virtual private network (VPN) capabilities it had rolled out to a number of its staff. The VPN allowed staff to connect directly to their secured network while at home or on the road. There is no doubt that a VPN can increase productivity, but there are some pretty major risks that can come with that convenience. The bank explained that the VPN was tied into its Active Directory server. For people who are not technical, basically this just means that when employees log in via the VPN, they use the same credentials they use to log on to their computer at the office. So I went back to my office, sat down, and picked up the phone. The first call I made was to find out the name of an employee in the IT department. I called the company's main line to the bank, pressed 0, and asked to speak with someone in the IT department. I was asked what I was calling about, so I told the employee I was receiving emails from that bank that seemed malicious. I could have used a number of excuses, but I have found that if you tie in an unhappy customer with a potential security issue, your call gets further up the food chain. In this case, I reached a man who I will call Bill Smith. I made up a story about the email, and after a few minutes, he was able to explain to me that I had called the wrong bank and it was actuall

President Barack Obama's plan to overhaul U.S. infrastructure includes constructing a nationwide "smart grid" that promises to help address many of our current energy challenges. The smart grid plan offers the hope that it "will save us money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack, and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation." While these are noble societal goals, smart grid technologies and systems as envisioned also raise concerns about individual privacy rights. Part of what makes the smart grid "smart" is its ability to know a lot about the energy-consuming devices in our homes and to monitor activity for those devices to help determine when power should be used or limited. Such knowledge is useful in regulating power consumption to use energy more efficiently. In addition to reaching into homes to regulate devices, information about usage and activities could be extracted from homes. Home energy consumption patterns could be gathered and analyzed on a room-by-room and device-by-device basis to determine which devices are used and at what time of day. Although this sort of information may not be considered terribly invasive for some, for others anything that violates the sanctity of "home" may cause tremendous concern.

It's hardly a bed of roses these days for IT companies and their managers. There are plenty of things nagging at high-tech vendors, too, according to the annual RiskFactor Report for Technology Businesses published by the financial consultancy, BDO Seidman. The information was gleaned from fiscal year 2008 10-K SEC filings of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. tech companies. Strong competition and consolidation risk factors top the list of IT managers' concerns. Failure to develop new products or services is also a big headache. Other items making the worry list: * International operations. * Management of current and future M&As. * And, for the first time: Natural disasters, war, conflicts and terrorist attacks. So how should a top manager deal with all this uncertainty? Play some tennis, go for a run, gobble a few Tums and then forge ahead with the best ideas you have.

Hackers, possibly from Asia, have stolen about a decade's worth of personal information on current and former UC-Berkeley students, the university announced Friday. The breaches involved records dating to 1999 at the school's health center that included Social Security numbers, health insurance information, immunization history and the names of treating physicians. No other treatment-related records were stolen, the university said, although self-reported medical histories of students who studied abroad were hacked. The school on Friday sent e-mails and letters to 160,000 people, including about 3,400 Mills College students who used or were eligible for University of California-Berkeley medical services. About 97,000 people are most at risk because their names and Social Security numbers could be connected by the hackers, said Steve Lustig, the university's associate vice chancellor for health and human services. "What's been taken is bits of data that the thief might put together into an identity," he said. The university traced the hackers back to Asia, possibly China, but the exact origin could not be pinpointed. UC and FBI investigators are probing the breaches, which apparently occurred over several months. An FBI spokesman said the agency was informed of the hacking immediately, but declined to provide more information. The thefts were discovered about a month ago, but system administrators did Advertisement not realize the breadth of the attack until April 21. The hackers disguised their work as routine operations and then left taunting messages for UC-Berkeley employees, said Shelton Waggener, the university's associate vice chancellor for information technology. The thieves accessed the information through the university Web site, he said. "You should think of it as a public building," Waggener said. "They got into the building properly, but then they broke into secure areas." Administrators at Mills College, which contracts with UC-Berkeley for

A surprise legal maneuver by the defense in the Sarah Palin hacking case could undermine key charges carrying the stiffest potential penalties. A lawyer for the Tennessee college student charged with hacking into the Alaska governor's Yahoo e-mail account last year says his client couldn't have violated Palin's privacy because a judge had already declared her e-mails a matter of public record. "He's not suggesting that e-mail can't be private," says Mark Rasch, a former Justice Department cybercrime prosecutor. "He's saying this particular e-mail was not private or personal because of who she is and because it wasn't intimate communication. " Additionally, photos that 20-year-old David Kernell allegedly obtained of Palin and her family were not private since the Palins are "the subjects of untold numbers of photo-ops," the lawyer argued last week, in one of a slew of motions and memorandums attacking the government's four-count federal indictment against Kernell.

Creative lawyer. The kid is still stupid. To me, It says more that Palin didn't get in trouble for using a public web mail account for State business. The kid who reads her email is on trial? What a country.

Weak security policies and practices in nearly all 24 major federal agencies in 2008 have resulted in exposing personally identifiable information of Americans, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). "An underlying reason for these weaknesses is that agencies have not fully implemented their information security programs," according to the GAO report, issued Monday. "As a result, agencies have limited assurance that controls are in place and operating as intended to protect their information resources, thereby leaving them vulnerable to attack or compromise." Federal agencies have reported some progress, providing awareness training for employees and testing system contingency plans, the GAO said. Still, employees with significant security responsibilities are not getting enough security training and known vulnerabilities remain wide open. The GAO conducts a periodic review of information security policies and procedures at federal agencies. Inspectors general review agency conformity to the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA) and report their findings to Congress.

Hackers will soon gain a powerful new tool for breaking into Oracle Corp's database, the top-selling business software used by companies to store electronic information. Security experts have developed an easy-to-use, automated software tool that can remotely break into Oracle databases over the Internet to simulate attacks on computer systems, but cybercrooks can use it for hacking. The tool's authors created it through a controversial open-source software project known as Metasploit, which releases its free software over the Web. Chris Gates, a security tester who co-developed the Metasploit tool, will unveil it next week at the annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, where thousands of security experts and hackers will gather to exchange trade secrets. "Anyone with no skill and knowledge can download and run it," said Pete Finnigan, an independent consultant who specializes in Oracle security and who advises large corporations and government agencies.

Social networkig may seed malware spread. Education is still one of the most successful computer security tools

Websense CTO Dan Hubbard outlines four ways companies can protect their information from threats and compromise on the social Web. 1) Most Web Posts on Blogs and Forums are Actually Unwanted Content (Spam and Malware) As more and more people interact with each other on sites allowing user-generated content, such as blogs, forums and chat rooms, spammers and cybercriminals have taken note and abuse this ability to spread spam, post links back to their wares and direct users to malicious sites. Websense research shows that 85 percent of all Web posts on blogs and forums are unwanted content - spam and malware - and five percent are actually malware, fraud and phishing attacks. An average active blog gets between 8,000 and 10,000 links posted per month; so users must be wary of clicking on links in these sites. Click here to find out more! Additionally, just because a site is reputable, doesn't mean its safe. Blogs and message boards belonging to Sony Pictures, Digg, Google, YouTube and Washington State University have all hosted malicious comment spam recently, and My.BarackObama.com was infected with malicious comment spam.

Dr. Jay Holland of Little Rock and two former employees of St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center pleaded guilty Monday to misdemeanor violations of the federal medical records privacy law, the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI in Little Rock announced. Holland, Sarah Elizabeth Miller of England and Candida Griffin of Little Rock admitted accessing "without any legitimate purpose" the medical records of Anne Pressly, the KATV-TV, Channel 7, reporter who was fatally attacked in her home in October. For the violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, each faces up to one year in prison, a fine of up to $50,000, or both. Sentencing has not been scheduled.

Buying and renting tools used by cybercriminals to conduct attacks and steal credentials is becoming much easier for the average person. "For Rent" signs hang on botnets, automated hacking toolkits are sold at bargain prices, and the data reaped by the criminal activity is sold and traded in online forums on a daily basis. Researchers at networking giant Cisco Systems Inc. are warning of the increasingly sophisticated cybercriminal underground economy and how it could be attractive to those having trouble finding work or facing layoffs in a troubled global economy. Meanwhile, cybercriminals are borrowing some of the best strategies from legitimate companies and forming partnerships with one another to help make their illegal activities more lucrative, according to Cisco.

Did we need more proof that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link?

A secure Web mail company that challenged hackers to break into the company's Web mail system is paying out a US$10,000 prize, just days after launching the contest. A team of hackers managed to hack into StrongWebmail CEO Darren Berkovitz's Web mail account, using what's known as a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack, the company confirmed Monday. "They did it using an XSS script that took advantage of a vulnerability in the backend webmail program," StrongWebmail said in a statement. StrongWebmail launched the contest at the end of May as a way of promoting the voice-based identification technology sold by its parent company, Telesign. Hackers were given Berkovitz's e-mail address and password and challenged to break into the account. The company thought this would prove difficult because StrongWebmail requires a special password that is telephoned to the user before e-mail can be accessed.

Every time you get online, your privacy comes under attack. Whether it's an overbearing End User License Agreement, contact forms, or just website cookies, there are literally millions of ways that you can let your private information slip away online. One of the best ways to fight invasions of your privacy is to get informed and learn how to prevent it. Read on to find advice, organizations, and other resources that can help you keep your privacy safe online. Guides & Articles These resources have specific advice and information for protecting your online privacy. 1. EFF's Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy: Read this guide from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to learn how you can protect private information online. 2. Frequently Asked Questions about Online Privacy: Get answers to questions about online privacy and safety from this resource. 3. Is Your PC Watching You? Find Out!: This article from CNN will help you figure out if your privacy is being violated through your PC. 4. Nameless in Cyberspace: Anonymity on the Internet: Find out why the right to anonymity online is so important to have by reading this article. 5. Consumer Privacy Guide: The Consumer Privacy Guide offers a variety of resources and information for protecting your privacy online. 6. This Email Will Self-Destruct: Learn about email security measures that you can take to protect your privacy. 7. Anti-Spam Resources: Visit this guide to learn how to stop receiving junk email. 8. All About Internet Privacy and Security: Read this guide to learn about security terms and Internet privacy settings. 9. Online Privacy: The Complete Guide to Protect You: WebUpon's guide discusses steps you can take to protect your online privacy. 10. Social Networking and Safety Online: Read this guide to learn how to practice common sense on social networking sites. 11. Internet privacy: Wikipedia's entry on Internet privacy offers a broad view at staying private o