Monday, September 26th, 2011
Cisco support will certainly increase the attractiveness of Microsoft’s Hyper-V environment (server virtualization) to corporate, enterprise clients.
As Microsoft positions their Hyper-V environment against VMware’s ESXi, it will need to offer greater support and visibility of the managed environment. Cisco will be offering virtual switch support for Hyper-V, which is similar to what it offers VMware environments. Currently, the battle is being won by ESXi.
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
In a rough and unforgiving economy, Oracle has managed to boost sales by 12 percent in it’s first quarter. As many continue to question Oracle’s move to purchase Sun Microsystems last year–the fact that hardware sales fell 5 percent to $1 billion only fuels more concern. Oracle’s recent growth is attributed to strong corporate demand for software. Oracle’s primary business of selling and maintaining corporate database software is a clear demonstration of strength, but the concerns are real–whether of a risky venture into hardware or of Oracle’s 30% revenues stemming from a shaky Europe.
Monday, May 30th, 2011
Lockheed Martin admitted a serious attack breached it’s system walls this month. The attack was discovered on May 21st. The company claims that no customer information was exposed in the attack–even still, President Obama has been briefed on the situation. The company said that the attack was “a significant and tenacious.” It reported that the company’s information security team quickly detected the intrusion, which allowed them to secure customer, program and employee personal data.
Lockheed Martin is a global security company that focuses on research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services.
Source:
Lockheed Martin Customer, Program And Employee Data Secure
May 28th, 2011
lockheedmartin.com
Monday, April 11th, 2011
Hackers, utilizing an unpatched bug in Flash Player, are embedding malicious Flash files in Microsoft Word and Excel documents to attack users. The technique has giving some cyber-criminals a foothold into corporate networks. The vulnerability also exists in Adobe Reader and Acrobat.
RSA Security was one of the victims. Hackers gained access to their network and stole information about their SecurID two-factor authentication product. In a more recent series of attacks (this month), a malicious Flash player was embedded into a Microsoft Word document that contained content from the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Source newsletter and a title Disentangling Industrial Policy and Competition Policy in China. The probable targets were legal departments of American corporations and Government.
Sunday, September 26th, 2010
It has been discovered that the operating system at the Bushehr plant, Iran’s first nuclear power station, has been infested with the Stuxnet worm. The worm is a highly complex, malicious software ( weapon ) that focuses on the vulnerabilities of systems built by the Siemens company. The Stuxnet worm is capable of seizing control of industrial plants, and it’s complexity suggests that it must have been built by a nation-state.
It is estimated that the Stuxnet worm has infected up to 30,000 IP addresses in Iran, and it has been found on the personal computers of staff of the plant.
Monday, September 6th, 2010
The European Commission is considering whether to open a second investigation into the prohibited subsidizing of modem manufacturers by the Chinese Government. Option, a Belgium 3G modem maker, raised a complaint in the EU that Chinese companies were dumping wireless modems onto the European market at insanely cheap prices. The complaint alleges that ZTE and Huawei, two manufacturers are subsidized by their Government, which gives them a hugely unfair advantage in the open markets.
During the last investigation, the Chinese Government accused the European Union of protectionism.
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
Based on a survey by Lumension in a study titled “Federal Cyber Security Outlook for 2010 Survey”, almost three quarters of the government IT administrators polled in the survey feel that the US is at high risk for a cyber attack by a foreign country in the next year.
Specifically, the majority of IT administrators and decision makers were worried about the increasing sophistication of cyberattacks. The next highest concern on the list was over negligent or purposely malicious employees or insiders that directly or indirectly cause the exploitation of a system or network. These risks are heightened by a general lack of sufficient resources and coordination–for example, 42 percent said they don’t have the budget or staff to properly address security risks. 59 percent of those polled said their agency or government department say they were hit by viruses or malware in the past year. 50 percent reported the loss of sensitive or confidencial information or data due to a negligent employee or insider.
Source: http://www.lumension.com/Federal-Cyber-Security-Outlook-for-2010.aspx
Monday, March 29th, 2010
UK’s Military Intelligence, Section 5 (M5) has instituted a redundancy program for staffers that lack IT skills. In a report issued by the Intelligence and Security Committee to parliment, it was stated that M5 will be issuing voluntary and compulsory reduncancies.
This represents an effort to address a growing concern for the effectiveness and influence of cyber warfare and the growing needs of information technology.
“The Committee welcomes the new developments in the field of cyber security which indicate that the threat of electronic attack is now being taken seriously across both Government and the intelligence and security Agencies” Page 17, Annual Report 2009–2010, Intelligence and Security
Committee.
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
February was a bad month for email. Due to a surge in the month of February, spam now accounts for 90% of email traffic according to Symantec. Two botnets, named Grum and Rustock, helped this spam surge by pushing up spam levels 5.5 percent. The Grum botnet came back from a period of plateau to increase activity by 51%. The rise of both botnet systems were linked to activity related to Canadian pharmaceutical spam.
Country specific:
Spam levels reached 93.4% of all e-email in Italy last month
Denmark was at 92.8%
Russia at 91.8%
US was 90.2%
Monday, February 1st, 2010
Google will be teaming up with Neustar UltraDNS to work on a proposed extension to DNS. The concept of the project would make it so that the first three quarters of a user’s IP address would be included in a DNS request. Each DNS request would then have a built-in geographic awareness, which would improve the responsiveness and accuracy of the Domain Name System.