IT security and information risk management historically look for threats beyond the firewall. However increasingly threats to IT are coming from the inside.
A white paper produced by the Carnegie Mellon University CyLab examines patterns and trends of malicious insider activity and the best practices for the prevention and detection of insider threats.
Read the white paper here: Cert - Common Sense Guide to Prevention and Detection of Insider Threats in PDF format.
Any small business faces challenges when it comes to incorporating IT into their business. They lack the large budgets of corporations and often the training and know-how on how to use IT to improve their business.
Microsoft Live Small Business is sponsoring five events nationwide aimed at women entrepreneurs. Called Vision To Venture the one day event will feature small business experts who will show you how to start and expand your small business using online tools such as Microsoft Live Small Business.
Intel announced today at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai an upcoming technology that will help address the issue of laptop theft. This is a major concern for companies with a mobile workforce. By nature the portability of laptops make them ideal targets for theft. News headlines of laptops containing sensitive information such as Social Security numbers and confidential company information being compromised from stolen laptops have become common. IT departments have been scrambling to lock down their company laptops and portable devices.
While current disk encryption technology allow you to encrypt the contents of a hard drive, Intel plans to further address the issue by rendering the entire laptop unusable should it fall into the wrong hands. Called Anti-Theft Technology (ATT) it appears it will render both the processor and the storage devices inaccessible.
Today Microsoft gave advanced notification of eight security updates to be released on 4/8/08. Five are rated as critical and 3 as important. Critical patches include Windows, Microsoft Project, Internet Explorer and VBScript programming software. Two of the updates rated as important are for Windows and the third is for Microsoft Visio software.
The 4/8/08 updates will also include non-security updates to MS Office Accounting 2008, MS Office 2007, Outlook 2007 and 2003 Junk Mail Filters and Windows Live Writer.
A recent trend being discussed around the web is the concept of topless meetings. No, not what you are thinking. They are laptop(less) meetings where laptops, smart phones and other handheld distractions are prohibited. Living in the IT world they seem like a sacred right. We’re busy people who need to stay in touch with what is going on. Maybe you are missing the point of having a meeting. Or maybe you just missed an important point because you were distracted.
I have been in meetings where one-third of the room was either scrolling through email on their phone or had a laptop out. It seemed more like a down time break room than a meeting.
Sometimes I have seen it carried a too far. I have been in a few meetings where the person who scheduled the meeting was fully engaged in their laptop while “their” meeting was going on around them. Can you imagine the frustration of the people attending the meeting when the person who called the meeting is so disengaged from their own meeting?
