Author: Paul German

Dear editor, The latest hack to create a storm with the media and analysts alike is that of a large bank in the United Arab Emirates, reported to be Invest Bank. With large amounts of data, including tens of thousands of customer files, now in the public domain, it’s easy to see how the hack of this bank is a wake up call for all organisations, including financial institutions, to put serious security measures in place to contain breaches once they occur. With data including full names, credit card numbers and birthdays involved in the breach, it’s clearly a sensitive…

In a world where everything is online, from patient information to medical history, there is a greater need for organisations to carefully consider who can access their systems. In the past, sensitive patient data has been kept under lock and key, on paper, in a filing cabinet. However, today, healthcare data has become digitised, and with the move toward integrated care, organisations across the healthcare continuum are actively encouraged to share it. Yet, the risk associated with easy-to-share data and remote use thereof means that a single hack is now possible from unprivileged access, with extremely damaging consequences. The storm…

Encryption is a Red Herring – Segmentation is the key to Effective Security A new month, a new data breach. This time the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), a major U.S. government agency, had to reveal that on top of an initial breach of 4.2 million personal records, an additional 15 million records may have been compromised, holding detailed background investigations information.  The implications for both compromised employees and the wider government infrastructure are significant. In the inevitable high profile fall-out, the debate has raged about the lack of encryption at the OPM – despite the fact that encryption alone…

The decision to move to SIP trunking appears straightforward: reduced costs, greater scalability, improved disaster recovery options and access to the productivity benefits enabled by Unified Communications (UC).  But, as ever in the world of technology, the truth about SIP trunking is a little more complex than it may appear at first glance. Despite the headline ‘quick and simple’ message from both resellers and providers, moving to SIP is not as straightforward as just switching on the new service, there are costs and security risks to consider. So what are the essential issues to understand? Making the Change: The first…

In response to the recent survey from LogRhythm*, I find it shocking that almost half of organisations that have suffered a data breach took more than four months to detect the issue, and I agree with Ross Brewer that businesses are still not doing enough to protect their networks from today’s threats. The immediate reaction, the focus on fixing the threat detected, is of course essential, and is something that businesses must begin to put into practice. A three-month lag between detecting the problem and mitigating the risk is frankly unacceptable. Quite simply, even just a week of unfettered data…