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In belt-tightening times, making the case for security investment is more difficult than ever. Security Catalyst founder Michael Santarcangelo details five steps risk professionals can use to communicate value effectively. The biggest challenge security teams face in their organization is one of perception, according to Michael Santarcangelo, founder of Security Catalyst, a New York-based consultancy focused on changing the way people protect information. Santarcangelo, who was recently a keynote speaker at the CSO Perspectives conference, said professionals focused on security are practiced at looking at risks and reducing them. Unfortunately, the rest of society often doesn't see risks the same way, making communication difficult (See also: Security and Business: Communication 101). "They lack relevant context," said Santarcangelo. "So security people get wrapped up in thinking: 'The CFO wants an ROI. We better work on ROI.' But what the CFO is really saying is:' I don't understand what you do. So you have to justify it to me.' Santarcangelo outlined his strategies for making the case for security investments at the three-day event held in Clearwater, Florida. He gave an audience of security professionals the details of his five step process for getting executives and boards to understand, and even approve, spending decisions in tough economic times. Create Santarcangelo believes one of the most effective ways to communicate value is to place focus back on the person to whom you are trying to make your pitch (See also: A CEO and CSO Who Actually Communicate). "The reason why someone changes a behavior or takes an action is because there is an inherent benefit to the person," said Santarcangelo. "But when many people start to create, they forget that. They tend to fall into the trap of thinking: 'I'm really smart and I know a lot of stuff. So I'm just going to say it and hope they will understand the value of it.'" Instead, Santarcangelo recommends creating

As I'm sure you know, former NSA analyst Russell Tice revealed that the agency spied on journalists and ordinary Americans - not just communications between the U.S. and overseas. Speaking on the Keith Olbermann show on MSNBC, Tice said: "The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications," he said. "Faxes, phone calls and their computer communications. … They monitored all communications." He made a further appearance on Olbermann Thursday (view above), in which he said that the NSA combined these illegal wiretaps with credit card and financial data. ""This [information] could sit there for ten years and then potentially it marries up with something else and ten years from now they get put on a no-fly list and they, of course, won't have a clue why," Tice said. "This is garnered from algorithms that have been put together to try to just dream-up scenarios that might be information that is associated with how a terrorist could operate," Tice said. "And once that information gets to the NSA, and they start to put it through the filters there . . . and they start looking for word-recognition, if someone just talked about the daily news and mentioned something about the Middle East they could easily be brought to the forefront of having that little flag put by their name that says 'potential terrorist'." Why were they monitoring reporters? New York Times reporter James Risen told Olbermann he thought it was a plot "to have a chilling effect on potential whistleblowers in the government to make them realize that there's a Big Brother out there that will get them if they step out of line."

Social networking users are more vulnerable than ever and taking more risks with their online privacy. According to the 'Bringing Social Security to the Online Community' poll by AVG, while the social networking community has serious concerns about the overall security of public spaces, few are taking the most basic of steps to protect themselves against online crimes. Participants indicated concern over growing phishing, spam and malware attacks, and nearly half of those surveyed are very concerned about their personal identity being stolen in an online community. Despite widespread use of social networks at home and/or at work, 64 per cent of users infrequently or never change their passwords on a regular basis, while 57 per cent infrequently or never adjust their privacy settings. Further, 21 per cent accept contact offerings from members they do not recognise, more than half let acquaintances or roommates access social networks on their machines, 64 per cent click on links offered by community members or contacts and 26 per cent share files within social networks. As a result of this widespread proliferation of links, files and unsolicited contacts, nearly 20 per cent have experienced identity theft, 47 per cent have been victims of malware infections and 55 per cent have seen phishing attacks.

"We all know that Internet and communications technology is changing rapidly, creating huge opportunities for business innovation and individual self-expression. Most people are probably not aware, however, that privacy law is not evolving nearly as quickly. It is time to update legal protections to reflect the impact the digital revolution is having on modern life. Cloud computing -- a bit of tech-jargon meaning the use of remote servers to store and process data -- is a great example. The movement of personal and proprietary data off desktop computers and into "the cloud", which is made up of server farms and broadband connections, is a major disruptive trend in computing. Unless our laws change to account for cloud computing and other equally momentous technology developments, the Constitution's protection against unreasonable search and seizure will become a relic of the past. The federal law setting standards for government access to personal communications -- the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) -- was written more than two decades ago, before the Internet took off. "

An eBay Inc. effort to broaden communication through the popular Twitter Web-messaging service highlights the hurdles facing corporate users of online social media. The growing Twitter audience also attracted the attention of eBay's lawyers, who last month required Mr. Brewer-Hay to include regulatory disclaimers with certain posts. Some followers think the tougher oversight is squelching Mr. Brewer-Hay's spontaneous, informal style. His experience shows the tension that can arise as more companies tap social media to reach investors, customers and others. Eighty-one Fortune 500 companies sponsor public blogs, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Chevron Corp. and General Motors Corp., according to the Society for New Communications Research. Of those blogs, 23 link to corporate Twitter accounts. On Thursday, a Johnson & Johnson executive reported for the first time on the health-care giant's annual meeting via Twitter, which allows users to post "tweets" of as many as 140 characters via text messages and the Web. Such efforts raise thorny questions. Blogs and tweets can run afoul of Securities and Exchange Commission regulations on corporate communications. But sanitizing such posts risks hurting credibility with online audiences. The online auctioneer launched a corporate blog in April 2008. Two months later, blogger Richard Brewer-Hay began "tweeting" -- posting updates on Twitter -- about Silicon Valley technology conferences, eBay's quarterly earnings calls and other topics.

"Social behavior is not a new concept - it simply implies living and working in a community instead of being isolated. What's new is the emergence of platforms to create a setting and values that are intrinsic to a community. Values such as: sharing of ideas and expertise in real-time, establish

""So many people in America think this does not affect them. They've been convinced that these programs are only targeted at suspected terrorists. … I think that's wrong. … Our programs are not perfect, and it is inevitable that totally innocent Americans are going to be affected by these programs," former CIA Assistant General Counsel Suzanne Spaulding tells FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith in Spying on the Home Front. 9/11 has indelibly altered America in ways that people are now starting to earnestly question: not only perpetual orange alerts, barricades and body frisks at the airport, but greater government scrutiny of people's records and electronic surveillance of their communications. The watershed, officials tell FRONTLINE, was the government's shift after 9/11 to a strategy of pre-emption at home -- not just prosecuting terrorists for breaking the law, but trying to find and stop them before they strike. President Bush described his anti-terrorist measures as narrow and targeted, but a FRONTLINE investigation has found that the National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in wiretapping and sifting Internet communications of millions of Americans; the FBI conducted a data sweep on 250,000 Las Vegas vacationers, and along with more than 50 other agencies, they are mining commercial-sector data banks to an unprecedented degree."

It affects each & every US citizen in one way or another. Good video on privacy & security.

The European Commission started legal action against Britain on Tuesday for what the EU executive called a failure to keep people's online details confidential. EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said the action related to how Internet service providers used Phorm (PHOR.L) technology to send subscribers tailor-made advertisements based on websites visited. Reding said Internet users in Britain had complained about the way the UK applied EU rules on privacy and electronic communications that were meant to prohibit interception and surveillance without the user's consent. "Technologies like Internet behavioural advertising can be useful for businesses and consumers but they must be used in a way that complies with EU rules," Reding said in a statement. "We have been following the Phorm case for some time and have concluded that there are problems in the way the UK has implemented parts of the EU rules on the confidentiality of communications," Reding said. She called on Britain to change its national laws to ensure there were proper sanctions to enforce EU confidentiality rules. Unless Britain complies, Reding has the power to issue a final warning before taking the country to the 27-nation EU's top court, the European Court of Justice. If it rules in favour of the European Commission, the court can force Britain to change its laws. (Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by Dale Hudson)

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IT directors are adding multiple layers of protection to their networks and constantly upgrade those measures to adjust for new threats. Is this good? Is the Internet too broken to fix? Is there a better path to enterprise network security? One option is a new "gated community" Internet, where users give up their freedoms and anonymity for safety. My initiation to the Internet and the World Wide Web occurred in 1994 in a large meeting room at an Atlanta hotel. Most of the 100 or so seats were empty. Those in attendance seemed fairly rabid about this new network and took exception to one speaker's prediction that the Web would become a major marketing vehicle. "Not gonna happen," said one attendee. "We'll spam them into submission if they try. We won't let this become commercialized." I kind of chuckled to myself. Those early adopters were mainly concerned with protecting the Internet from commercialization and marketing. Security was not even part of the discussion. Now, it is threatening to dismantle the Internet as a communication and commerce tool. Cyber attacks on U.S. government computer networks increased a reported 40 percent in 2008, according to data from the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team. More than 100 million credit card accounts at Heartland Payment Systems were compromised last year. In November, the Pentagon suffered from a cyber attack in the form of a global virus or worm that spread rapidly throughout a number of military networks, and caused the agency to ban the use of external storage devices, such as flash drives and DVDs. And this is just the tip of the Internet security Relevant Products/Services iceberg. Enterprise networks are being used to launch phishing Relevant Products/Services and other Internet scams, such as the Conficker worm that infected 12 million computers late last year. IT directors everywhere are adding multiple layers of protection to their networks and constantly having to upgrade those measures to adjust fo

A recent data breach study commissioned by the state of Maine sheds light on the losses banks experienced as a result of the data breaches at TJX and Hannaford Brother's supermarkets. The state's banks said they incurred $2.1 million in expenses related to data breaches since January 1, 2007. The Hannaford breach had the largest impact, affecting 71 financial institutions and incurring $1.6 million in expenses according to the Maine Data Breach Study. Hannaford is based in Scarborough, Maine. The TJX breach accounted for $485,000 in expenses. The report was issued by the Main Bureau of Financial Institutions in November 2008. It studied the impact of data security breaches on Maine banks and credit unions. Fifty credit unions and 25 banks headquartered in Maine responded to the survey. Financial institutions reported more than 18 million records breached last year, according to the Identity Theft Research Center. The San Diego-based nonprofit found that data breach reports across five industry sectors jumped to 656 last year, up 47% from 2007. About 12% of the reports came from financial-services firms, up from 7% in 2007. In Maine, the Hannaford breach resulted in more than $318,000 in gross fraud losses, according to data reported by 22 financial institutions. More than 700 accounts were used to buy items fraudulently, although five of the 22 institutions that suffered a fraud loss did not report the number of accounts, according to the report. The Hannaford breach cost some banks as much as $58,000 to reissue credit cards to customers. Investigation expenses cost nearly $30,000 for some banks. Communication to customers cost nearly $28,000, some banks and credit unions reported. Fraud losses of nearly $45,000 were tied to the TJX data breach. The losses were reported by six financial institutions. The expenses for reissuing credit cards cost some banks as much as $32,000. Investigation expenses were as high as $21,000 for some banks. Communication to custom

Top House and Senate Democrats are working on legislation that would prevent online marketers from sharing Web-surfing information unless Internet users allowed them to. That's according to House Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee chairman Rick Boucher (D.-Va.), who told Multichannel News that such a bill was in the works and was one of his top legislative priorities. The issue of online behavioral marketing has gained traction recently, spurred by privacy concerns and by media companies' need to find new ways for advertisers to reach aggregated audiences at a time of fragmented viewing and multiplying delivery platforms. Boucher's predecessor atop the committee, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), held a hearing last fall on the issue and helped quash a test by ad-tracking company NebuAd and cable operator Charter Communications. In an interview, Boucher said he was teaming with Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), ranking member of his subcommittee, and Joe Barton (R-Texas), ranking full committee member, on a bill that would apply "across the board" to behavioral advertising and data collection by Web sites. "The goal would be to give the Internet user a sense that information about him that is collected by Web sites is well understood by the user, so he has an opportunity to know what is collected," Boucher said. "He would then have an opportunity to act in a way that prevents that Web site using that information to market him personally, and an even broader opportunity to prevent the transfer of that information about him to third parties." Boucher envisions a combination of opt-in and opt-out requirements. "Opt-in would apply where the information is conveyed to third parties," he said, while "opt out would apply where the Web site that collects the information is using that information directly to market the customers from whom it is collected." Center for Digital Democracy executive director Jeff Chester was please

Will monetary value increase the value of user's data on social networks?

Facebook and Twitter have helped make social networking a household word. Now they need to make money. Efforts to monetize the popular Internet services are increasingly a priority within the two companies, with Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone outlining several initiatives at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York this week. And analysts and investors, in search of the next Google-like hit, are paying close attention to the breakneck speed at which Facebook and Twitter are adding new users. While the popularity of the two social media firms has yet to translate into the kind of revenue-generating machine that Google Inc developed with its search advertising business, some say Facebook and Twitter have become so central to the Internet experience that they are inherently valuable. "Both are new ways of communicating. And when you have a new way of communicating ... you benefit people enough so that there is going to be value there," said Tim Draper, managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, noting that he regretted not having invested in either firm. In April, Twitter's website attracted 17 million unique visitors in the United States, up sharply from 9.3 million the month before. Facebook grew to 200 million active users in April, less than a year after hitting 100 million users.

GovLoop (http://govloop.com), an online community created for and by government employees, announced today it has signed up its 10,000th member less than a year after launching. Dubbed by some as a "Facebook for Feds," GovLoop brings together government employees from the U.S. and other nations to discuss ideas, share best practices and create a community dedicated to the betterment of government. A revolution is happening in government as the result of a new generation of government employees, the rise of Web 2.0 technologies, and the Obama administration's focus on transparency, participation, and collaboration. This revolution is often called "Government 2.0" and GovLoop is at the center of this movement. The social network was developed by Steve Ressler, a 28-year old federal employee from Tampa, Fla. who is also a co-founder of Young Government Leaders (http://youngovernmentleaders.org). Fed up with the silos that existed across government agencies, including artificial barriers between levels of government, rank and age, Ressler believed there had to be a better way to share information, so he launched GovLoop.com in June 2008.

You can't ignore the presence and usage of all the myriad forms of instant messaging, social networking and blogging. The millennial generation won't thrive in companies where Facebook is banned or texting is frowned upon. They think and work so differently from their baby boomer managers that generational clashes are inevitable. The Security Executive Council and CXO Media, producer of CSO Perspectives and CSO magazine, are partnering to probe attitudes toward collaborative technologies like IM and social networking. By participating you will receive a research report based on this survey. Definition of web 2.0 apps: The term "Web 2.0" describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web culture communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. (Wikipedia)

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski will unveil in a speech on Monday new proposals that would force Internet providers to treat the flow of content equally, sources familiar with the speech said on Friday. The concept, referred to as net neutrality, pits open Internet companies like Google Inc against broadband service providers like AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc, and Comcast Corp, which oppose new rules governing network management. Advocates of net neutrality say Internet service providers must be barred from blocking or slowing traffic based on content. Providers say the increasing volume of bandwidth-hogging services like video sharing requires active management of their networks and some argue that net neutrality could stifle innovation. "He is going to announce rulemaking," said one source familiar with his speech about broadband, to be delivered at the Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank. "The commission will have to codify into new regulations the principle of nondiscrimination." The FCC could formally propose the rules aimed at applying to wireless and landline platforms at an open meeting in October.

"As the federal government readies the third iteration of Einstein, privacy concerns over the intrusion detection system were voiced at a Senate hearing on Tuesday. Philip Reitinger, Department of Homeland Security deputy undersecretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate, told the Senate Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security that DHS envisions deploying Einstein 3 as an intrusion prevention system. Einstein 1 monitors network flow and Einstein 2 detects system intrusions. "This more robust version of Einstein would provide the federal government with an improved early warning and an enhanced situational awareness; the ability to automatically detect malicious activity; and the capability to prevent malicious intrusions before harm is done," Reitinger said. But Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel and director of Project Freedom, Security and Technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology, cited press accounts that Einstein 3 would rely on pre-defined signatures of malicious code that might contain personally identified information, and threaten the privacy of law-abiding citizens. "While Einstein 2 merely detected and reported malicious code, Einstein 3 is to have the capability of intercepting threatening Internet traffic before it reaches a government system, raising additional concerns," Nojeim testified. Einstein 3 reportedly could operate within the networks of private telecommunications companies, and Nojeim wondered if the technology could analyze private-to-private communications. "If Einstein were to analyze private-to-private communications, that would likely be an interception under the electronic surveillance laws, requiring a court order," he said. "

When I initially speak with clients about, or lecture on the need for a structured organizational change management (OCM) program, a common question is whether simply having a communication plan to broadcast news about the change is a good substitute.

The Supreme Court upheld a U.S. government crackdown on profanity on television, a policy that subjects broadcasters to fines for airing a single expletive blurted out on a live show. In its first ruling on broadcast indecency standards in more than 30 years, the high court handed a victory on Tuesday to the Federal Communications Commission, which adopted the crackdown against the one-time use of profanity on live television when children are likely to be watching. The case stemmed from an FCC decision in 2006 that found News Corp's Fox television network violated decency rules when singer Cher blurted out an expletive during the 2002 Billboard Music Awards broadcast and actress Nicole Richie used two expletives during the 2003 awards. No fines were imposed, but Fox challenged the decision. A U.S. appeals court in New York struck down the new policy as "arbitrary and capricious" and sent the case back to the FCC for a more reasoned explanation of its policy.

PCI - better than nothing, but still vastly inadequate. - Karl The Heartland Payment Systems and Network Solutions data breaches have thrust the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) into the spotlight, raising the question: Does PCI compliance help in the fight against fraud? David Taylor, founder of PCI Knowledge Base, recently administered new research on PCI compliance, and in an exclusive interview he discusses: Goods news - and not-so-good-news - about PCI compliance; Unique PCI challenges for merchants and banking institutions alike; What needs to be done to raise awareness of PCI compliance. Taylor founded the PCI Knowledge Base and before that the PCI Alliance. He worked with many leading edge companies as an analyst for Gartner for 14 years. The PCI Knowledge Base is a research community that shares information and knowledge to help merchants, banks and other organizations achieve PCI compliance.

The Heartland Payment Systems and Network Solutions data breaches have thrust the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) into the spotlight, raising the question: Does PCI compliance help in the fight against fraud? David Taylor, founder of PCI Knowledge Base, recently administered new research on PCI compliance, and in an exclusive interview he discusses: Goods news - and not-so-good-news - about PCI compliance; Unique PCI challenges for merchants and banking institutions alike; What needs to be done to raise awareness of PCI compliance. Taylor founded the PCI Knowledge Base and before that the PCI Alliance. He worked with many leading edge companies as an analyst for Gartner for 14 years. The PCI Knowledge Base is a research community that shares information and knowledge to help merchants, banks and other organizations achieve PCI compliance.

Would Near-Field Communication be considered a superior technology to high-frequency radio frequency identification?