On your marks!

The Beijing Olympics start tomorrow. The World’s biggest sporting event of all time, I am sure that it will not disappoint. 

In winning the Olympics, Beijing outlined that it would harness the power of IT, innovate around it, to bring the Games to new audiences. We will see a convergence of IT and Media on a scale not seen before. Many of the big Media companies and franchises have extensive plans to bring the games to the ‘net in a big way. I know that many network administrators are bracing themselves for the impact of ‘streaming’ video of Games – if they allow it on your corporate network.  It will be interesting to see (or maybe not) what the strain will be on your ISP as well. 

Where you have a mass audience connected to the ‘net, then in the shadows the’ bad guys’ will be lurking. In the Symantec State of Spam report for August, we are already seeing Spammers peddling their wares on the back of the Olympics. Symantec Security Response have already written up a blog on an attempted Phishing attack, purporting to sell tickets for the games. The creators of the site went to great lengths to make it convincing, even using an SSL connection, believe it or not. 

So, get on your marks, get set, and it is ‘Go’ for no doubt many Olympic related Spams, Phishing attempts, links to web sites that will be showing funny/curious videos of events of the games etc. So, I say, “Citius, Altius Fortius”, to all of my colleagues in the IT Security industry, to keep you all safe and for you to enjoy the Games.

August 7, 2008 | Filed Under Events, Identity theft, Security, Spam, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

Bosses most at risk of Identity Theft?

The media has been quick to cover the story from Experian, the credit reference agency, of the rise in reports of identity theft.  Many covered the story under the headline of ‘Bosses most at risk of ID theft’.  What was notable in this news release was the profiling of reported victims and the ability to show ‘hot-spots’ for identity theft in the UK.

But why is it company directors or bosses who run their own businesses are most prone to identity theft?  Of course criminals go where the money is, and by and large, ‘Bosses’ have more money than other mere mortals.  I can see some logic there. Given the growing sophistication of identity theft attacks and the ancillary capability to gather more information on people, the criminals can start to separate the ‘bosses’ from the ‘non-bosses’.

Then again, it may simply be that given the legal and reporting requirements of being a ‘Boss’ there is more publicly available information out there if you a company director.  Is it time to look back into this to assess if there is a potential risk?

Or, it may just be a lifestyle issue.  If you are a ‘Boss’ then maybe you rely on others to help you with some of the admin that goes with being in charge and trying to organise a hectic lifestyle. This plays in the risk of personal identifiable information being shared amongst the boss and maybe an admin assistant PA etc. You see the picture; shared logins, shared passwords, weak passwords so that a number of people can remember what it is etc. The other reality maybe that many of these people are just so busy building and running their businesses, they do not have time to focus on ‘security’?

So, my messages to the ‘Bosses’ is hopefully something they can appreciate - do the basics well and do them all the time. So, use strong passwords. We found that 50 per cent of people still use really weak passwords (http://www.symantec.com/norton/theme2.jsp?themeid=nol). Use some sort of anti-phishing tool in your browser and ensure you have good anti-spam tool for your email.

May 28, 2008 | Filed Under Identity theft, Miscellaneous, Security, Spam | Leave a Comment