Infosecurity Conference: Interesting sidelights of the event
Photo by: dkpto
Data security professionals the world-over gathered for their annual jaunt at the Infosecurity Europe 2008, held from 22-24 April at the Olympia Grand Hall, London. The Infosecurity event meets yearly to discuss the state of information security in the computing world.
This year’s event was widely awaited for the Information Security Breaches Survey, 2008 (ISBS) which was released as scheduled during the conference. But, two other developments caught mainstream media attention: one was the debut of the hackers association called Council of Registered Ethical Security Testers (CREST) and the other was the unraveling of new internet crimes by the security firm Finjan.
The ISB Survey urged businesses to strain further
This survey is sponsored by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to study the latest information security scenario in UK. Overall, the survey indicated an increase in awareness of data security related issues in the UK business environment. However the preparations for responding to a security breach were found woefully wanting.
The survey found more than half of the businesses to have suffered heavy losses due to security breaches in spite of taking comprehensive steps against such events. Amongst other things, it listed failure of the businesses to test their security systems as responsible for this situation.
Finjan reveals new criminal trend
The US based security firm, Finjan, revealed it had witnessed personal information being sold widely on the net. In fact 13% of all items sold online happened to be credit card information, it claimed.
In order to minimize risk of exposure, criminals are choosing to buy stolen information than using their private servers for stealing them. Then again, rather than using stolen identities, they are finding it easier and safer to sell them for profit.
Need another shocker from the firm? Medical history reports, information about goods-in-transit and personal pension-related info are also bartered widely online!
Council of Registered Ethical Security Testers (CREST) took a bow here
An association formed by a group of friendly hackers made its debut at the conference. These born-again hackers and other benevolent security experts came together to formalize their contribution to the industry by creating standards for security testing for software products.
The move is essentially targeted at software manufacturers. Software producers can use the new standards to improve security perceptions of their products. Professional members of the association can now be employed to test level of security in software products and to plug security holes in them before release. The association would also conduct examinations to certify professional testers to industry standards.
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August 2nd, 2010 at 7:47 am
It’s great to know that there are steps being taken to control and perhaps diminish Internet scams and frauds. Being involved in the Internet marketing biz, I find that a lot of people are still hesitant to just put out their cards to purchase a product or service that interests them because of the continuous news about prevalent online scams.