WPPS C-Suite News

"Commonwealth Equity Services LLP of Waltham, Mass., agreed to pay the penalty for failing to have anti-malware software on its reps computers or written security policies to deal with security breaches. Securities brokers and registered investment advisors are required by SEC regulations to have written procedures to protect customer information."

"common examples of employee behaviors that demonstrate a lack of diligence with respect to safeguarding sensitive information include speaking loudly about confidential information in public places, failing to log off laptops, leaving passwords in sight or unprotected, and accessing unauthorized websites.Common examples of employee behaviors that demonstrate a lack of diligence with respect to safeguarding sensitive information include speaking loudly about confidential information in public places, failing to log off laptops, leaving passwords in sight or unprotected, and accessing unauthorized websites."

Solutions Delivered on the Business Social Software Platform

The CERT Virtual Training Environment (VTE) - A revolutionary resource for information assurance, incident response and computer forensic training, with over 500 hours of material available. VTE blends the best of classroom instruction and self-paced online training, delivering training courses, anytime access to answers, and hands-on training labs all through a standard Web browser.

The economic downturn will hit the Internet economy hard in 2009, according to the latest available OECD estimates. The IT Outlook 2008 says that the IT industry is likely to have grown by 4% at most in 2008 compared to the previous year. But with the outlook for the global economy worsening and business and consumer confidence plumetting, growth will remain flat or decline in 2009.

New laws to crack down on Facebook identity fraud

"The White House must lead the way forward with leadership that draws upon the strength, advice and ideas of the entire nation," Melissa Hathaway, acting senior director for cyberspace for the National Security and Homeland Security Councils. Obama administration cybersecurity advisor

Google's cloud computing services. On its website, Google repeatedly assures customers that their data is secure and private, while published vulnerabilities demonstrate that it is not.

Special interest groups and lawyers claim they are defenders of individual privacy. But all that red tape is causing more harm to consumers than good.

Over the last few years, both consumers and corporate clients have rushed to move their data to .the cloud,.1 adopting web-based applications and storage solutions provided by companies that include Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Over 69% of Americans use webmail services, store data online, or otherwise use software programs such as word processing applications whose functionality is in the cloud. This trend is only going to continue. The shift to cloud computing exposes end-users to privacy invasion and fraud by hackers. Cloud computing also leaves users vulnerable to significant invasions of privacy by the government, resulting in the evisceration of traditional Fourth Amendment protections of a person's private files and documents. These very real risks associated with the cloud computing model are not communicated to consumers, who are thus unable to make an informed decision when evaluating cloud based services.

the creation of Cyber Command will not militarize overall U.S. government efforts to protect American government and private computer systems. That effort will be led by a Cyber Security Coordinator - a new position President Barack Obama says he will soon create at the White House. The civilian effort will involve several agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency and the intelligence services, with help from the Defense Department. Lynn pledged it will not infringe on Americans' civil liberties - a concern some experts have expressed.

The topic of Cyber Terrorism has been a subject of many debates as to the reality of a significant event-taking place at the click of the button. In recent media coverage we've seen the London & Spain train bombings being triggered remotely using one of the most world's most adopted technologies, a cell phone. Who would ever think that someone would use a cell phone as a trigger point for detonating a bomb? Additionally, who would ever think that a terrorist organization would realize that all cell phones on the same cellular network receives their time/date from the same network timeserver so everyone has the correct time. This has allowed them to conduct simultaneous attacks via sms or speed dial on their phone.

Heartland Payment Systems chief executive Robert Carr remembers what it felt like when he first heard about the massive data breach at his company earlier this year. "I wanted to throw up. It was devastating," says Carr, recalling how he felt upon realizing that one of his worst fears had come true. "People had asked me for years 'what keeps you awake at night' and I would keep telling them it was the fear of a data breach,"

In 2008, 44% of breach incidents were due to third-party handling of data. With HITECH, organizations will now be held responsible for a third party's handling of your data

The ID Theft Center found that of the roughly 250 data breaches publicly reported in the United States between Jan. 1 and Jun. 12, victims blamed the largest share of incidents on theft by employees (18.4 percent) and hacking (18 percent). Taken together, breaches attributed to these two types of malicious attacks have increased about 10 percent over the same period in 2008.

In a presentation titled "Computing (strike that - Litigation) in the Cloud," Steven Teppler, senior counsel at KamberEdelson in New York, said cloud computing and services are a corporate counsel's nightmare.