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Changes relating to different aspects of data management have been highlighted as key trends in the IT industry for 2009 in a report by consultancy Deloitte. The falling price of digital storage has caused an irresponsible approach to file management and IT leaders will need to give an increased focus to these issues, says Deloitte, along with finding ways around the rise in physical storage costs. "There are ways to control the escalation of storage costs, such as de-duplication tools that can free up space by reducing duplicate files," says the report. "Companies can assess the impact of individual applications, especially email - which is estimated to take up 25 per cent of enterprise storage capacity," it says. According to Deloitte's research, businesses will become increasingly aggressive when pursuing disputes related to copyright infringement and digital ownership rights. "If undertaking a swift launch of a product or digital application, companies should ensure that no element could lead to litigation," says the report. Despite pointing out that 2009 will be the break-out year for social networks in the business, Deloitte says that such networks will need to be developed with caution to encourage more productivity and balance control with employees' desire for privacy.

Government Information Security Podcasts As a GovInfoSecurity.com annual member, this content can be used toward your membership credits and transcript tracking. Click For More Info Probing Federal IT Security Programs: Gregory Wilshusen, GAO February 23, 2009 Government Accountability Office auditors will have a busy spring, examining a number of federal government programs aimed at securing government information systems and data. In an interview with GovInfoSecurity.com, Gregory Wilshusen discusses how the GAO is looking at how private industry and two dozen federal agencies employ metrics to measure the effectiveness of information security control activities. Other current GAO information security investigations he discusses include: Federal Desktop Core Configuration intended to standardize security features on personal computers purchased by the government. Trusted Internet Connection initiative aimed at slashing government Internet connections to fewer than 100 from more than 2,000. Einstein automated networking monitoring program run by U.S Computer Emergency Readiness Team. Gregory Wilshusen is director of information security issues at GAO, where he leads information security-related studies and audits of the federal government. He has more than 26 years of auditing, financial management and information systems experience. Before joining GAO in 1997, Wilshusen served as a senior systems analyst at the Department of Education as well as the controller for the North Carolina Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources.

Though Facebook has sometimes been criticized for sacrificing the privacy of its users in order to monetize the service, Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, has presided over the social network's efforts to build out the most sophisticated privacy options in the industry. On a granular level, Facebook users can now control what bits of information they share with each individual friend, group or network. Facebook users have taken notice. According to an annual study by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research firm, Facebook ranks within the top 20 (15th) most trusted companies for privacy as rated by U.S. consumers. Kelly's job sometimes appears tricky, however. He must ensure that users feel they have control over their information, while weighing that need against Facebook's business model, which relies heavily on a culture of openness and sharing. Here is the full interview CIO conducted with Kelly during our reporting for a special feature on social networks and privacy. Kelly talked about what constitutes Facebook's overall view towards privacy, and how that affects its ability to serve up ads.

A 10-month cyberespionage investigation has found that 1,295 computers in 103 countries and belonging to international institutions have been spied on, with some circumstantial evidence suggesting China may be to blame. The 53-page report, released on Sunday, provides some of the most compelling evidence and detail of the efforts of politically-motivated hackers while raising questions about their ties with government-sanctioned cyberspying operations. It describes a network which researchers have called GhostNet, which primarily uses a malicious software program called gh0st RAT (Remote Access Tool) to steal sensitive documents, control Web cams and completely control infected computers. "GhostNet represents a network of compromised computers resident in high-value political, economic and media locations spread across numerous countries worldwide," said the report, written by analysts with the Information Warfare Monitor, a research project of the SecDev Group, a think tank, and the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto. "At the time of writing, these organizations are almost certainly oblivious to the compromised situation in which they find themselves." The analysts did say, however, they have no confirmation if the information obtained has ended up being valuable to the hackers or whether it has been commercially sold or passed on as intelligence. Although evidence shows that servers in China were collecting some of the sensitive data, the analysts were cautious about linking the spying to the Chinese government. Rather, China has a fifth of the world's Internet users, which may include hackers that have goals aligning with official Chinese political positions.

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday accepted an appeal by several groups that brought a constitutional challenge to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board created by 2002 changes in federal accounting laws. The free-enterprise groups and a Nevada accounting firm sued to stop the Securities and Exchange Commission from naming members of the accounting board, set up by Congress to oversee public-company accountants. "In creating the board, Congress deliberately sought to test the outer boundaries of its ability to reduce presidential power," the groups said in the appeal. The groups, in their lawsuit, claimed the U.S. Constitution required board members to be appointed by the president or the SEC chairman, rather than the entire commission for the securities agency. The Supreme Court's decision to hear the appeal breathes new life into the case, which didn't get much traction in lower courts. The U.S. Solicitor General's office, in court briefs, had urged the high court to reject the appeal, calling it a "poor vehicle" to resolve the constitutional issues raised by the challengers. "The president's control over the SEC is constitutionally sufficient and the act in turn grants the SEC complete and pervasive control over every aspect of the board's authority," Solicitor General Elena Kagan wrote. A U.S. federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2007 and the Washington-based U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals also rejected the challenge in a 2-1 decision last year. The private, nonprofit board is charged with inspecting and disciplining public company accountants. The case is the Free Enterprise Fund vs. the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, 08-861. Oral arguments will be held in the fall, and a decision is expected by July 2010.

Everywhere you look (even here at Ars), there are articles about people making poor decisions about what kinds of info and how much to share on sites like Facebook. The Internet is no longer a place where you can hide out easily-friends, family, and employers are all lurking, reading your embarrassing status updates and checking up on those drunken pictures from last week. And that's just the beginning-the world of social networking is a feeding ground for identity thieves and stalkers, too. But it doesn't have to be that way. Many users are aware that Facebook has numerous privacy controls, for example, but even the most experienced Facebook users often don't know just how much they can control who sees what. For instance, did you know that you can specify...

DESPITE SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS since the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 became effective, the continuing cost of compliance with the act's Section 404 requirements remains a concern for board members and management. A periodic operational audit of the Section 404 program can provide valuable information to executive management and the audit committee, and potentially identify areas where significant costsavings can be realized. Whether the Section 404 program is managed by the finance department, internal auditing, or another organization, it's an excellent candidate for this type of review, particularly if the focus remains on program efficiency. Several questions, based on The IIA's publication Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404: A Guide for Management by Internal Control Practitioners, can be used as the basis for the audit. The questions cover issues ranging from ensuring that operating management takes ownership of its processes, to achieving fewer and more effective key controls, to determining whether the external auditor's reliance on management testing has been optimized.

Internet scams, phishing, identity theft and other attacks that exploit your personal data are always a threat when you shop online, set up an email account, use a credit card, manage an online bank account or carry your Social Security card. There is hope, however, for fighting these threats, and you can start by taking back control of all of your personal data. The 50 tips and tools in this list will help you understand how these scams originate, how to protect yourself online and offline, and how to track down your personal data on the Internet. Web Privacy Protect yourself and your data online by choosing a secure Web browser, understanding the dos and don'ts of wireless security, and correctly managing passwords.

Locaccino is the only location-sharing system that gives you precision control over who can see your location. While most location-based systems only allow you to list which of your contacts should or shouldn't be able to see your location, our privacy settings allow you to create rules as simple or complex as you want them to be! Our technology allows you to easily define the times when you want to share your locations. Locaccino lets you create groups for your friends to simplify your location preferences. With Locaccino, allowing your co-workers to see your location from 8AM - 5PM is a snap. Locaccino also allows you to specify where you can be located. Using a Google maps interface, you can define regions where you do and don't want other people to be able to find you. Locaccino Location Sensing Our software will sense your location without even requiring GPS! By leveraging the wifi network of Skyhook Wireless, a nearby location will be found for you. The Locaccino software you'll download will do all the work. We Protect Your Privacy We are the only location-based system with privacy researchers actively working to make sure that your data is kept safe. Our Privacy Policy explains in detail exactly how we store and process all of your data. We want you to know that your location information is saved anonymously and we will never sell any of your personal data.

US senators have drafted legislation that would give the federal government unprecedented authority over the nation's critical infrastructure, including the power to shut down or limit traffic on private networks during emergencies. The bill would also establish a broad set of cybersecurity standards that would be imposed on the government and the private sector, including companies that provide software, IT work or other services to networks that are deemed to be critical infrastructure. It would also mandate licenses for all individuals administering to strategically important networks. The bill, which is being co-sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee chairman John Rockefeller IV and Senator Olympia Snowe, was expected to be referred to a senate committee on Wednesday. Shortly after a working draft of the legislation began circulating, some industry groups lined up to criticize it for giving the government too much control over the internet and the private companies that make it possible. "This gives the president too much power and there's too little oversight, if there's any at all," said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "It gives him the power to act in the interest of national security, a vague term that has been broadly defined." Nojeim was pointing to language in the bill that permits the president to "order the limitation or shutdown of internet traffic to and from any compromised federal government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network" after first declaring a national cybersecurity emergency. A separate provision allows the executive in chief to "order the disconnection of any federal government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks in the interest of national security." "It applies to any critical infrastructure," Nojeim added. "Surely, the internet is one." The bill would also require NIST, or the National Institute of Standards and Techn

There's a great deal of classified information in federal government databases that never should become public. Some of this information, involving the military or the intelligence world, must be made available to contractors by necessity, and that data should be closely guarded and kept confidential. But an alarming new article that we report on this week illustrates this is not always the case, and that information can inadvertently seep out from a classified venue and make it into the public's hands. It turns out that secret information about a U.S. missile defense system was found on the hard drive of a computer discarded by a major contractor, and sold on eBay. The discarded computer, reported the Guardian newspaper in Great Britain, contained documents from defense contractor Lockheed Martin that included detailed test launch procedures, photos and personal data of employees. The hard drive was turned over to the FBI, but one has to wonder how this could have happened and why sufficient controls were not put in place. Apparently, this is not an isolated incident.

Maintaining privacy is on many people's minds these days, but sometimes that's the last thing they do. Allegations last week that two British tabloids, The Sun and The News of the World, had employed high-technology snoops to listen in on the mobile phone messages of public figures highlighted fears of what can happen when digital data fall into dubious hands. The reports came only days after another privacy debacle, this one self-inflicted. Photos and family information about Sir John Sawers, soon to be Britain's chief spy, appeared in another newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, after his wife posted them on Facebook. While attitudes toward privacy can appear paradoxical, the seeming contradiction is really about something else: control. When people bare their bodies on Facebook or their souls in the digital confessional of Google's search engine, they feel as if they are in charge. Not so, when the private embarrassments come to light unexpectedly.

Difficult economic times can be the breeding ground for increased fraudulent activities. In July 2009, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (www.fincen.gov) published its 12th edition of The SAR Activity Review - By the Numbers. SARs (Suspicious Activity Reports) are one key aspect of FinCEN's efforts related to its responsibility for regulatory administration of the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970. Many different financial industries such as banks, credit unions, insurance companies, check-cashing services, broker/dealers, and casinos are required to complete and file SARs. According to FinCEN's press release on the SAR Activity Review, "The report reveals that of the 20 different violation types tracked, seven of the categories relate specifically to fraud and all seven showed an increase in SAR filings during the year. While these categories represent one-third of the possible violation types, they accounted for nearly half of the increase in total SAR filings from 2007 to 2008, with all of the fraud categories seeing double-digit increases in percentage of filings in 2008. These categories are: check fraud, mortgage loan fraud, consumer loan fraud, wire transfer fraud, commercial loan fraud, credit card fraud, and debit card fraud." Could any of this apply to you? Are your control and monitoring processes able to identify these examples of common patterns of suspicious activity that FinCEN has identified?

"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has just written an open letter to Facebook users regarding a privacy overhaul that is due to hit the site in the next few weeks. Soon, users will be able to selectively choose, on a per-post basis, who can see the content they post to the site. Facebook is also going to remove regional networks entirely, largely because some of those networks (like China) consist of millions of users, which makes them useless from a privacy standpoint. If these changes sound familiar, it's because Facebook actually announced them way back in July. Zuckerberg also notes that Facebook now has 350 million users ? it has added a whopping 50 million of them in the last two and a half months. Alongside the regional network change, privacy controls will be simplified. As Facebook rolls out the new privacy settings, users will be presented with a page designed to walk them through the new options. Depending on your current privacy level, Facebook will make recommendations, though you'll be able to change them as usual. "

"Hackers are using a variety of weapons and exploiting errors such as default passwords and weak or misconfigured access control lists (ACLs), according to the latest Verizon Business Data Breach Investigations Report. The follow-up to April's 2009 Data Breach Investigation Report looks under the hood of the company's probes, analyzing how breaches happen and how to protect sensitive data. "Customers who read the 2009 Data Breach Investigation Report said they wanted to know how these attacks take place, give some examples from our caseloads and see if those circumstances can happen to them," said Wade Baker, Verizon Business research and intelligence principal. "

"In light of a spike in identity theft and the frequency with which personal information is stored on portable devices, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) have expanded Generally Accepted Privacy Principles (GAPP) to include protocols for securing and disposing of personal information. "Safeguarding personal information is one of the most challenging responsibilities facing an organization, whether such information pertains to employees or customers," said Everett C. Johnson, CPA, chair of AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force and a past international president of ISACA, a global information technology association. "We've updated the criteria of our privacy principles to minimize the risks to personal information." GAPP offers guidance and best practices on securing portable devices, breach management and ensuring continued effectiveness of privacy controls. The guidance additionally covers disposal and destruction of personal information. The principles are designed for chief privacy officers, executive management, compliance officers, legal counsel, CPAs and CAs offering technology advisory services. "Portable tools such as laptops and memory sticks provide convenience to employees but appropriate measures must be put in place to secure them and the data they contain," said Donald Sheehy, CA.CISA, CIPP/C, associate partner with Deloitte (Canada) and a member of the AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force. "We must stay abreast of technological advances to assure that proper measures are put into place to defend against any new threats." Created by the AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force, GAPP is designed to help an organization's management team assess an existing privacy program or address privacy obligations and risks. The principles provide a framework for CPAs and CAs to offer privacy services to their clients and employers, such as advisory services, privacy risk assessments and attestation or

"Two L.A. traffic engineers who pleaded guilty to hacking into the city's signal system and slowing traffic at key intersections as part of a labor protest have been sentenced to two years' probation. Authorities said that Gabriel Murillo, 40, and Kartik Patel, 37, hacked into the system in 2006 despite the city's efforts to block access during a labor action. Fearful that the strikers could wreak havoc, the city temporarily blocked all engineers from access to the computer that controls traffic signals. But authorities said Patel and Murillo found a way in and picked their targets with care -- intersections they knew would cause significant backups because they were close to freeways and major destinations. The engineers programmed the signals so that red lights for several days starting Aug. 21, 2006 would be extremely long on the most congested approaches to the intersections, causing gridlock. Cars backed up at Los Angeles International Airport, at a key intersection in Studio City, at access onto the clogged Glendale Freeway and throughout the streets of Little Tokyo and the L.A. Civic Center area, sources told The Times at the time. No accidents occurred as a result. As part of their plea deal, the engineers agreed to pay $6,250 in restitution and completed 240 hours of community service."

"The ubiquity of online advertising is a product of its importance to the internet economy, said a group of consumer advocates Wednesday during a debate on the future of online advertising. But the impact of new targeted advertising methods on consumer privacy and its potential to manipulate online experiences was the subject of heated argument at the event, sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Privacy does not mean the same thing to all consumers in all situations, said Progress and Freedom Foundation Senior Fellow Berin Szoka. Advertisements are attempts to capture user attention - the "great currency of the Internet" - and when successful support a wide range of valuable content, he said. But in online life, "consumers have many values," Szoka added. "Privacy is one of them," he said, but it is not an absolute. Consumers must sometimes trade privacy for content, he said. "There is no free lunch." As more information and entertainment migrates to the internet, Szoka said it is "critical…that we find a way to support this media." Targeted advertising can fit the bill, he suggested - especially if technology gives users more control over their own preferences. Most consumers don't understand that advertising is a necessity for today's internet, he said. New technologies like targeting need to be given a try, he said, so content providers can recoup the value of their advertising - down 25 percent since 2000, he noted. Center for Digital Democracy founder Jeff Chester said Szoka's ideas about advertising's future represented a "false dichotomy." The real debate should be over the rules that regulate advertiser content, he said. Chester warned of a "Targeting 2.0″ system in which neuroscience combined with massive databases not only serve ads, but target content to users. "It's about influencing our behavior without our consent," he said. Chester pointed to the subprime lending cr

"Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin Wednesday said the Internet giant "screwed up" by collecting personal data through wireless networks and promised new oversight as European officials pledged to open investigations of the data collection. Authorities in Germany, Spain and Italy said Wednesday they were investigating Google and its Street View service, which uses camera-equipped vehicles to take street images and mark the location of Wi-Fi networks. Mr. Brin, speaking the same day at Google's developer conference in San Francisco, said the company would put "more internal controls in place" to prevent such data captures in the future, including the hiring of outside help. "Trust is very important to us," Mr. Brin said. "We're going to do everything we can to preserve that trust.""

G apologizes. Again, better to ask forgiveness... If users remain silent & gvt doesn't prosecute, why comply?