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United States defense-related technologies and information are under attack: each day, every hour, and from multiple sources. The attack is pervasive, relentless, and unfortunately, at times successful

Defense contractors with access to classified material are required to identify and report suspicious contacts and potential collection attempts as mandated in the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (NISPOM)

DSS encourages all Facility Security Officers to use the information in this report to supplement security awareness and education programs at their facilities.

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.

Senior compliance officers at more than 100 leading U.S. companies responded to 28 questions in four key areas critical for the compliance function: leadership, reporting relationships and structure; compliance function scope, focus and risk; metrics to gauge program effectiveness; and budget, staffing and resources. A major finding of the study: One of the biggest obstacles facing Chief Compliance Officers (CCOs) is measuring the effectiveness of their compliance functions - almost 40 percent of the companies surveyed said they make no attempt to measure the effectiveness of their compliance program.

“An effective compliance program is the cornerstone of cooperation credit allowed under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and stakeholders are demanding much higher transparency in how compliance risk is effectively managed,” said Miles Everson, PwC principal and global and U.S. risk and compliance leader.

“Without a clear measure of the compliance department’s effectiveness, much else is in jeopardy. Lacking this,

To address these new challenges, the report said, enterprises need to shape their risk exposure, communication, end-user education and technology in a delicate balance.

One of the newest vectors of attack – the so-called “bring your own device” approach – has sprung up from the burgeoning market for smartphones and tablets and their adaption into the enterprise network, the report said. Security issues seen on the mobile platform are rising with the market – with double the number of mobile exploit releases that were seen in 2010.

The results indicate that "there are more cloud implementations within the enterprise than people were aware of," Jay Fry, vice president of marketing for the cloud computing division at CA Technologies, told eWEEK. The report indicates that IT administrators are starting to get some visibility on what the various groups within the organization are working on, he said. As more people begin to discuss the cloud within the enterprise, the visibility will continue to improve, said Fry.

In the past, there were "rogue deployments" that the company’s IT staff didn’t even know about, because the individual line of business was purchasing software-as-a-service offerings without involving IT.

Collaboration tools such as hosted e-mail, antivirus and spam filtering and Web conferencing software accounted for a bulk of cloud deployments, at 75 percent, according to the report

"Three-fourths of businesses are deleting files, reformatting or destroying drives, or 'do not know' how they are erasing sensitive data. Deleting files from a hard drive only marks the files to be rewritten, which may never occur. Furthermore, reformatting the drive only removes the entries in the index or table of contents that point to the data. And, physically destroying a drive is not a guaranteed method of protection, as Kroll Ontrack has been recovering data from severely damaged drives, such as the Columbia space shuttle, for more than 25 years.

"Surveying more than 1,500 participants from 12 countries across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific regarding their data wiping practices also revealed that four in 10 businesses gave away their used hard drive to another individual and 22 percent do not know what happened to their old computer.

Only 19 percent of businesses deploy data eraser software and fewer, 6 percent, use a degausser to erase media. When asked if and how businesses verify their data has been deleted, very few (16 percent) reported relying on a product or service report to confirm all of their data had been wiped.

“United States defense-related technologies and information are under attack: each day, every hour, and from multiple sources. The attack is pervasive, relentless, and unfortunately, at times successful,” writes Kathleen Watson, director of DSS. “As a result, the United States’ technical lead, competitive edge, and strategic military advantage are at risk; and our national security interests could be compromised.”

Attempts to gather intelligence information were traced to over half of the countries in the world. After East Asia and the Pacific, the Near East and Europe and Eurasia were of greatest counterintelligence concern. Despite their overall decline, “European and Eurasian cyber actors remain some of the most active targeters of United States technology.”

“Facilitated by ever increasing world wide connectivity, the ease of inundating industry with overt email requests and webpage submissions made direct requests a premier vehicle for solicitation and/or collection,” the report states. “While not all direct requests for information or services represent organized collection attempts, exploitation of this medium provides collectors an efficient, low-cost, high-gain opportunity to acquire classified or restricted information.”

Growing scrutiny of cloud computing security in the first half of this year is not surprising in light of the numerous data breaches, privacy issues and headline grabbing cloud outages that have occurred recently

The 26-page survey report returned a stunning conclusion – though one not surprising to those familiar with legal contracting for cloud computing; namely that a majority of cloud providers do not believe data security is their responsibility - but the customer’s. 

It gets worse . . . auditors and legal can step in and cry 'foul.' It is difficult to provide non-repudiation within spreadsheets in a scalable context. Basically, one can not go back and truly state that "this person answered this compliance (a legal process) on this date and time, and we know this is the original answer and it has not been modified." Spreadsheets do not have this level of authentication, access control and audit trail. GRC processes require a robust audit trail so that you know who answered a question and if that answer was modified - spreadsheets do not provide the functionality to cover this.

To replace spreadsheets I would look towards governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) management platforms. Vendors in this space include Archer Technologies, Axentis, BWise, MEGA, MetricStream, OpenPages, Paisley, and QUMAS. These vendors, and many more, have integrated content and workflow technologies to manage GRC assessment processes. They are a much better choice over the use of spreadsheets for GRC processes.

An even greater number, 66 percent, would be prepared to work for lower pay if a job offered more flexibility, at least when compared with a better-paid job without such flexibility. Businesses are uncertain about the move to home working, mainly because of security. According to the Cisco survey, they should also factor in some of the advantages. Almost half of those employees who do work from home reckon they put in between two and three extra work hours per day as a result.

Employees' dislike of offices is nothing new but what has changed is that it is now technically possible to make an employee productive without asking them to travel to a building every day.

It seems just as likely that the death of the office, predicted many times in the last 40 years, might be as much about the changing economics of work than any desire of employees to escape to the back room and the VPN.

AVG's research shows that: * 83% agree that having the right level of IT security protection is critical to their business * 77% say that a security threat could have a significant negative impact on their business * 55% feel they can make IT security decisions without 3rd party influence * However, only 48% have a clear IT security policy in place for their staff, leaving most at the mercy of what employees decide to download or access online * As a result, perhaps not surprisingly, 1 in 4 have experienced a security breach * Most worryingly, 1 in 7 have no security software or systems in place at all AVG also asked small businesses whether they expect to see growth in the next five years - 61% of UK and 74% of US small businesses say that they do.

"The vast majority of staff in any organisation are trustworthy and honest. However, businesses are now beginning to realise and understand the scale of the threat posed by the small proportion of staff that act dishonestly and defraud their employer."

According to the ACFE 2010 report on occupational fraud the median length of the schemes was 18 months from the time the fraud began until the time it was detected. The median loss caused by the occupational frauds in the report was $160,000. Nearly one-quarter of the cases caused at least $1 million in losses and nine cases caused losses of $1 billion or more.

Historically, the most serious threat from staff fraud has been centred on relatively senior employees in management positions. However, the major threat has now shifted down the organisational hierarchy to more junior members of staff, who have access to, and responsibility for, more confidential customer and payroll data than ever before,"

There’s no point investing in and implementing an ethics and compliance program unless the time is spent integrating the program into every aspect of an organization. The need for companies to develop effective ethics and compliance programs has been acknowledged by several government agencies- examples are the SEC in the US and the government in the United Kingdom. Both groups have recently passed legislation or made amendments to existing guidelines, focusing heavily on the importance of ethics and compliance at all levels of an organization- especially at the top.

Employees at each level contribute to the success of a company’s ethics and compliance program. Integrating ethics and compliance at each level helps ensure the message from the top makes it all the way down to the lower levels of the organization. Training, messages and other ethics and compliance initiatives must be developed to evolve with employees as they move through the company. That being said, employees at various levels need to be prepared to address different ethical issues they may encounter based on the role they play in the organization.

Integrating Ethics in the Middle  In many companies, employees report that the middle level is where ethics and compliance commitments break down. Since many of the lower level employees report directly to those in the middle, a commitment to ethics and compliance from middle managers is equally as important as it is at the top.

The Massachusetts law applies not only to businesses in the state but to any company that keeps personal data on the state's residents. George examines two parts of the law that are particularly notable because they require action to avoid breaches--not just notify victims after the fact.

Businesses are required to have a working information security program for protecting personally identifiable information, and they must submit a written information security program to the state. They also must encrypt data in motion and at rest, including information on portable devices such as USB drives, laptop computers and smartphones.

A second complicated--and evolving--area of compliance is e-discovery, which is the process of handing over electronically stored information requested during a lawsuit.