The BBC published a story today explaining how one of its reporters fooled HSBC’s voice biometrics security system. The bank let the reporter’s non-identical twin access his telephone banking account when he mimicked his brother’s voice. His brother was then able to access his account details and make financial transactions. IT security experts from Aeriandi, Positive Technologies and Intercede commented below. Tom Harwood, Chief Product Officer at Aeriandi: “Biometrics technology has been widely shown to significantly reduce fraud – but it’s not the whole solution. And as this experiment has illustrated no security technology is 100% fool-proof. Technology advances have shown that…
ISBuzz Team
A new spyware framework that allows the government to implant remote beacon and loader capabilities on target computers from Windows XP to Windows 10 has been disclosed in the latest data dump from WikiLeaks. Michael Patterson, CEO at Plixer commented below. Michael Patterson, CEO at Plixer: “Efforts to thwart new malware strains has failed. Complete prevention in today’s massively complex world of IT is not possible. Instead of placing budget and effort solely in the name of prevention, organizations must focus their energy on establishing robust incident response processes and contingency plans for inevitable breaches. The new requirement is to…
Following the news that cryptocurrency miner Adylkuzz may have caused more damage than the WannaCry malware. Steve emphasises the need for organizations to rethink their approach to evaluating the risks of patching or not patching vulnerabilities in their environment, Steve Grobman, CTO at McAfee commented below. Steve Grobman, CTO at McAfee: “Organizations should never conclude that the absence of a major cyber-attack means that they have effective cyber defenses. WannaCry and Adylkuzz show how important security patches are in building and maintaining those effective defenses, and why regular patching plans to mitigate environment vulnerabilities need to become a higher priority. Whenever there…
Following the news that Prime Minister Theresa May has announced that Facebook users will have the right to permanently delete information about them before they turned 18, Richard Lack, EMEA Managing Director at Gigya commented below. Richard Lack, EMEA Managing Director at Gigya: “Mrs May’s headline grabbing proclamation that teenagers will be afforded the right to be forgotten on social media platforms is interesting, since this right is already enshrined in the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation from May 25th 2018, which will be signed into UK law and which Elizabeth Denham, the UK Information Commissioner has already stated will be…
There is a growing trend in the data transfer arena. What is extreme file transfer and why is there an increasing need for it? There’s a new type of file transfer solution gaining traction in the IT world, and it focuses on larger files. As the advancing of technology has allowed for the larger dissemination of data, popular file transfer solutions, such as email basic and basic FTP, have become less effective in moving larger files further distances. Businesses have turned to compression, or even physical delivery, as methods to send large files. Compression is a known attack vector. Physical…
Europe lags behind the U.S. in outlining detailed plans for GDPR compliance; UK firms are least prepared DETROIT- Compuware Corporation, the world’s leading mainframe-dedicated software company, today released new research revealing that, despite making progress over the past 12 months, the majority of European and U.S. businesses are still inadequately prepared to comply with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), due to be enacted next year. Key findings include: 67% of European organisations say they are well-briefed on the GDPR and the impact it will have on the way they handle customer data; an improvement from 55% when…
New research from Shred-it’s seventh annual Security Tracker that found that more than half of UK business owners unaware of incoming general data protection regulation. Gordon Morrison, Director of Government Relations at McAfee, on the transformation potential of GDPR commented here on the research below. Gordon Morrison, Director of Government Relations at McAfee: “With this new research indicating that 43% of senior executives of large companies are unaware of the forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it’s clear that not only is there a great deal of education needed around what GDPR is, but of the potential benefits that the regulations…
Cyber insurance providers are always looking for that litmus test on how to judge if an organization seeking insurance is serious about their security program. I am going to say it bluntly — if an organization had significant business impact due to the WannaCry Ransomware operation, they were negligent in conducting security operations. This Microsoft flaw was big news back in March when the Shadow Brokers leaked the alleged stolen nation-state actor tools that took advantage of this flaw. This Microsoft flaw affected just about every operating system to include both user workstations and servers. Microsoft informed the world that…
Canadian mobile phone, TV, and internet service provider Bell has confirmed that the company had been hit by an unknown hacker who has managed to access its customer information illegally. In a brief statement released by Bell Canada, the company said an unknown hacker managed to have his hands on data of millions of Bell customers. Robert Capps, VP of Business Development at NuData Security commented below. Robert Capps, VP of Business Development at NuData Security: The biggest risk to mass email theft is phishing and malware distribution; 91% of cyber attacks start with a phishing email. Users are reminded to never click on any links received from…
In the aftermath of the WannaCry attack, Medical devices at U.S. Hospitals have now been hit by ransomware by a stolen National Security Agency Hacking tool. Craig Young, Security Researcher at Tripwire was on hand to comment and gives his reasoning to why these hospital vulnerabilities were not fixed beforehand. Craig Young, Security Researcher at Tripwire: “Medical devices often use operating systems from the Microsoft’s Windows Embedded product line. Unfortunately, these systems are not always easy to patch for a variety of reasons. Security fixes on embedded devices commonly require a complete firmware update from the vendor which is then manually installed on the device. This…