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This would in effect shift FISMA implementation responsibility away from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) to DHS, “where the knowledge of attacks informs the defense”, Paller said.

“DHS has already demonstrated that they are focusing on the critical controls....They are focusing on effectiveness measures, rather than make work”

The proposal would also expand the DHS authority over cybersecurity of private networks, particularly critical infrastructure. DHS would have the authority to develop and conduct risk assessments of private sector critical infrastructure systems and share information with the private sector about threats and best practices.

Small business owners' cybersecurity policies and actions are not adequate enough to ensure the safety of their employees, intellectual property and customer data, according to the 2009 National Small Business Cybersecurity Study. The study, co-sponsored by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and Symantec [Nasdaq: SYMC], as part of this year's National Cyber Security Awareness Month, surveyed nearly 1,500 small business owners across the United States about their cybersecurity awareness policies and practices.

The survey shows discrepancies between needs and actions regarding security policies and employee education on security best practices.

The study found that while more than 9 in 10 small businesses said they believe they are safe from malware and viruses based on the security practices they have in place, only 53 percent of firms check their computers on a weekly basis to ensure that anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewalls and operating systems are up-to-date and 11 percent never check them.

Behavioral Advertising Online behavioral advertising – the practice of tracking someone’s online activities to deliver targeted advertising – can raise potential privacy issues.  Do you disclose your practices to your customers and honor your promises? Children’s Online Privacy The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) gives parents control over what information websites can collect from their kids. If you run a website designed for kids or have a website geared to a general audience but collect information from someone you know is under 13, you must comply with COPPA’s two main requirements. Credit Reports Does your business use credit reports to evaluate customers’ credit worthiness? Do you consult credit reports when considering evaluating applications for jobs, leases, and insurance? Here is information about your responsibilities when using, reporting, and disposing of information in those credit reports. Data Security Many companies keep sensitive personal information about customers or employees in their files. Having a sound security plan in place can help you meet your legal requirements to protect that sensitive information. Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act requires financial institutions – companies that offer consumers financial products or services like loans, financial or investment advice, or insurance – to explain their information-sharing practices to their customers and to safeguard sensitive data. Health Privacy If you offer or maintain personal health records online, you could be covered by the FTC’s Health Breach Notification Rule. Are you familiar with your legal obligations in case of a security mishap? Red Flags Rule The Red Flags Rule requires many businesses and organizations to implement a written Identity Theft Prevention Program designed to detect the warning signs  – or red flags – of identity theft in their day-to-day operations.

“If this assessment demonstrates anything, it's that IT and security departments have got to gain greater visibility over all of their security and compliance activities and take steps to better understand and manage them.”

Back in the 1990s fellow science and technology journalist Charles Mann and I wrote a book uncovering the true story of how a lone, young, cognitively impaired hacker with relatively few computer skills managed to perpetrate what was then the most extensive and scariest series of computer break-ins ever — government weapons labs, dam control systems and ATM networks were among the hundreds of networks compromised. At the end of the book, we predicted that no matter how much effort was poured into making the Internet safer, hackers would always be able to have a field day, partly for technical reasons but also because companies and individuals would never get it together to take simple precautions critical to safe computing.

Sadly, Mann and I called it right. Viruses, trojans and spyware are bigger problems than ever. Employees unwittingly but routinely hand over their passwords to hackers who break into corporate databases to steal credit card and other information of thousands of customers. Private e-mail is rifled through and made public, and companies have their computers incapacitated by “denial of service” attacks. You need to ask yourself: Could your company survive an encounter with a hacker?

Don’t count on even the best security software or services to protect you —

best practices are being swept under the rug. Only 31 percent of respondents archived according to HIPPA recommendations

Another third stored archives in a single data center and only slightly more (36 percent) stored archives in datacenters located less than 100 miles apart.

Hosted solutions offer an attractive alternative to the healthcare industry. Such solutions ease the burden on in-house IT, which is typically characterized by few people, limited dollars and huge workloads.

The conference has commenced this morning in Jerusalem, a city of both ancient traditions and thoroughly modern influences, and I was reminded of how that same dynamic is true of privacy in the Internet age.  Yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of the OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data.  These privacy guidelines have served as the basis for numerous privacy laws in place across the globe.  Yet, even these privacy principles need to keep pace with the changing information environment.  In my remarks today at a panel discussion titled “Notice and Consent:  Illusion or Reality?”, I suggested that individual participation through mediums such as notice and consent remains important to safeguarding users’ privacy, but by itself does not afford enough protection.  This is particularly true given the explosion of information collection and use that is the fuel of today’s Internet economy. The same is true of the various legal frameworks that govern data collection, usage, and sharing.  Both are important, but neither is sufficient on its own.

Alongside individual participation and regulatory oversight, another vital aspect of privacy protection is often overlooked: the role and responsibility of the organization in maintaining and protecting personal data.

Microsoft’s view, as outlined in a new white paper released today at the conference, is that organizations’ privacy policies and data management practices most directly influence whether users’ personal information is kept safe or exposed to risk. Therefore, we believe that organizations—including Microsoft—must hold themselves accountable for acting to protect users’ interests and taking appropriate measures to safeguard privacy and personal data, even in the absence of specific regulatory mandates.

ONE: If your enterprise isn’t in energy, defense, or finance, it’s not a high priority target so don’t spend money like it is.

TWO: If you do lead a company in one of those 3 sectors, there’s nothing on the market today that will stop an adversary from stealing your most valuable data. The best that you can hope for is to raise the cost to an adversary to mount a successful attack against you, which means he’ll target a less well-protected company instead. This is known as the You-Don’t-Have-To-Outrun-The-Bear School of Security.

THREE: Your IT department’s job is not to protect you. It’s to protect the enterprise’s network. That makes you and your C-level colleagues the “10 ring” of the target.

The takeaway is to have a written agreement that governs this issue!

PhoneDog said it suffered $340,000 in damages. The account had 17,000 followers, "which according to industry standards, are each valued at $2.50."

Network & Systems delivering the cloud service How does the authentication to access the network devices and operating system implemented? Does it use any two factor authentication? About the availability of the network and security infrastructure? does it implement load balancing or high availability solutions for the critical infrastructure components like firewalls, IPS, reverse proxies etc… Is the underlying cloud systems are secured? Do they have a baseline configuration implemented? How does the configuration managed? Does the cloud computing provider got a plan and/or policy to perform configuration management, patch management, anti-malware etc. Does the network undergoes periodic penetration testing? Does it undergo internal vulnerability assessment periodically? How is it ensuring that a compromised client with privileged access to the operating system is separated internally? Does it undergo periodic audits against standards like ISO27001, SAS70 etc? How is the customer data separated from one another? What are the security controls implemented to ensure this separation? What are the protection and response controls against the Denial of Service attacks?

Cloud Applications & Data Protection What are the security controls in the application development process? Does it include security code reviews of the code being developed or used? Is there a documented change and configuration management process? How does the application servers patched and what frequency? What are the mechanisms for managing the access control? How is the database protected from unauthorized access? How are they identifying the access reset requests are from the actual user. How do they create and delete/disable user accounts? what are the procedures for these activities. IS the data encrypted? If encrypted, how is the encryption keys are protected? What is key management process being followed? How is the data loss prevention ensured? Details of the DLP controls implemented? Is there a backup mechanism established? How is the data protected in the backups? Does the cloud service provider meets the regulatory requirements? For example, if the service is a ecommerce service then the cloud service could become part of the card holder environment and thus the PCI DSS regulation as there are potential card data being processed. Similarly, if the health information is processed, it can be HIPAA and similar other regulations. Is the cloud computing service provider meets the compliance requirements? Where is your data being hosted? Is it within your country or its jurisdiction? Is your organization comfortable with the legal system in the country where your data resides? How about cloud computing service provider who has a network of data centres across the globe and your data is scattered across these data centres? Can it limit the countries where the data is stored?

What are the conditions / scenarios where the data is revealed without the consent / approval of the organization? Does the application provide enough audit trials to review the incidents? Does it corporate with local legal system? Often the local law authorities require access to the processing computers, how is it support those requests?

Yet those data centers, according to EPA figures cited by NIST, consume 1.5% of all electricity generated in the United States (compared with 0.6% worldwide in 2000). Globally, IT produces 2% of CO2 emissions.

Businesses that go with cloud computing could improve sustainability in two ways. First, companies maximize servers by sharing them, so fewer machines are chugging away. Second, on-demand usage means that firms needn’t consume way above their needs during slow times in order to be ready for busy times.

APT is the new way attackers are breaking into systems.

APT is a sophisticated, mercurial way that advanced attackers can break into systems, not get caught, keeping long-term access to exfiltrate data at will. 

APT focuses on any organization, both government and non-government organizations.

The Deloitte Forensic Center’s analysis of the E-Discovery: Mitigating Risk Through Better Communication survey results1 identified three interrelated challenges. They are: Communication Awareness Readiness

At the heart of e-discovery are two corporate functions that historically have had little in common, and tend to speak their own technical languages: legal and IT

Neither can be truly effective in the e-discovery process without a clear understanding of the other, yet communication and coordination between these two departments appears to be unclear to many survey participants: More than one-third of respondents (36 percent) don’t know the answer to how their legal and IT departments communicate.

Content, for now, is meager. A list of tips for individuals to secure their personal computers is found in the website's resources page as well as links to Langevin's and McCaul's press releases regarding cybersecurity in the site's media center.