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National High School Cyber Defense Competition Registering Teams for Fall
Exciting Education Initiative Offers Teens Insight to Cyber Careers
The registration deadline is looming to participate in the nation’s premier high school cyber defense competition, CyberPatriot III.
“Our unique online competition still has room for teams,” said Bernie Skoch, CyberPatriot Commissioner. “To join, a high school teacher signs up and signs on five bright students for a fun, hands-on learning opportunity. It’s a great chance for the top teams to win scholarship money and a trip to Washington, D.C.”
CyberPatriot, presented by Northrop Grumman, is the one-of-a-kind national cyber security competition produced by the Air Force Association (AFA), a nonprofit organization headquartered near Washington, D.C. The registration deadline is October 8, 2010.
Teams of five, with an approved coach (generally a teacher) sponsoring them, learn to defend a computer network from real-life computer threat scenarios. In the fall, hundreds of teams across the nation will square off online, using special software and programs provided by CyberPatriot, to competitively solve vulnerabilities in their network. The top teams then compete again in a series of online rounds to determine finalists for an all-expenses-paid trip to the nation’s capital and the Championship Round at the Gaylord National Convention Center, in conjunction with AFA’s Cyber Futures Symposium and Technology Exposition in April of 2011. Read more
Open Source Community Paves Way for Developers to Improve Internet Access for the Aging, Disabled
New technologies from OpenAjax Alliance greatly simplify, speed Web 2.0 application development
Aiming to greatly ease the barriers that the aging or people with disabilities experience in participating in Internet activities, the OpenAjax Alliance (OAA) announced it has created new open source tooling technology to help software developers make it dramatically easier for them to access and use Web 2.0-enabled business, government and consumer web sites. The new tooling technology simplifies the way Web applications are tested for compliance with current accessibility standards and guidelines, helping to speed up delivery of new accessible Internet applications.
Previously, developers had to complete their code and run various reports to determine if their application was compliant with accessibility standards. Using the new tooling technology, applications are tested dynamically, as developers build the code, providing real-time feedback on compliance.
A recent survey suggests that a full 69 percent of companies have realized measurable business benefits from Web 2.0 in their dealings with employees, customers, suppliers and industry experts. Unfortunately, millions of people with sensory, age-related, and other disabilities worldwide have been unable to fully participate in this evolution because of barriers to access and use.
OAA maintains the new tooling technology will help narrow the Web 2.0 digital divide for many segments of the global population by facilitating consistent, industry-wide interpretation of standards such as the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). Read more
JetBrains releases ReSharper 5.0
A Leading Developer Productivity Tool Simultaneously Ships With Visual Studio 2010, Provides New and Improved Features for Web Development, Code Analysis and Project Maintenance
JetBrains(R), creators of intelligent, productivity-enhancing tools for software developers, have announced the general availability of ReSharper 5.0, its award-winning productivity tool for .NET Framework development in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and earlier versions.
Simultaneously shipped with Visual Studio 2010, ReSharper 5.0 adds full-scale support for the IDE and the latest .NET Framework trends and technologies, including ASP.NET MVC 2.0, C# 4.0, and VB.NET 10. Major productivity improvements include an extensive toolset for web development, new features to support working with large projects, and numerous code analysis enhancements.
“As always, JetBrains is committed to making the latest and greatest productivity support available to all .NET developers,” said Oleg Stepanov, ReSharper project lead. “As Visual Studio 2010 is quickly securing its position as the foremost .NET IDE, we’re making sure ReSharper is there with it all the way. We’ve got ready-to-use support for new language features, a new and improved suite of capabilities for web development, and many code editor updates you are looking forward to – or already using – in Visual Studio 2010.”
ReSharper 5.0 provides the following key features and improvements:
1) Web Development: A greatly extended toolset available to ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC developers, including code inspections, navigation and code generation tools, and highlighting.
2) Project Maintenance: Teams working with large, complicated projects can now view, change and maintain project structure with more ease.
3) Support for Visual Studio 2010: ReSharper users have never enjoyed support for a state-of-the-art Visual Studio version that early.
4) Code Analysis: Includes many new code inspections and tools that help track sources of erratic application behavior and adopt best coding practices.
“Microsoft is pleased that JetBrains, a Visual Studio Industry Partner, has invested early in supporting Visual Studio 2010 and our next-generation application development platform, and is today simultaneously shipping ReSharper 5.0,” said Dave Mendlen, senior director of Developer Marketing at Microsoft Corp. “ReSharper 5.0 helps customers simplify their development process from design to deployment when using Microsoft products, particularly Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.”
To learn more about JetBrains ReSharper and download a free 30-day trial, visit http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper
Enterprises are under-investing in the protection of corporate secrets
Focus on Protecting Compliance-related Data Needs to Expand to More Valuable Intellectual Property
RSA, The Security Division of EMC and Microsoft (MSFT) announced the results of a commissioned global survey conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of RSA and Microsoft, entitled “The Value of Corporate Secrets: How Compliance and Collaboration Affect Enterprise Perceptions of Risk.” The survey of 305 IT security decision-makers worldwide revealed that enterprises are investing heavily in compliance and protection against accidental leaks of custodial data (such as customer information), but under-investing in protection against theft of far more valuable corporate secrets.
Security Spending Mis-aligned with Information Value
“Nearly 90% of enterprises we surveyed agreed that compliance with PCI-DSS, data privacy laws, data breach regulations, and existing data security policies is the primary driver of their data security programs. Significant percentages of enterprise budgets (39%) are devoted to compliance-related data security programs,” according to Forrester Consulting’s study. “But secrets comprise 62% of the overall information portfolio’s total value while compliance-related custodial data comprises just 38%, a much smaller proportion. This strongly suggests that investments are overweighed toward compliance.”
“Companies are spending money to protect customer, medical and payment card information, as they should, but more emphasis needs to be placed on protecting the intellectual property and data that has intrinsic value to an organization,” said Sam Curry, CTO, Marketing, RSA, The Security Division of EMC. “If IP is lost, it can cause long term competitive harm to an organization. The recent and highly-sophisticated attacks targeting intellectual property of large multinational companies are examples of this type of loss.”
Information Theft is More Costly than Accidental Loss
The survey found that while organizations focus on data security incidents related to accidental loss, information theft by employees or trusted outsiders is more costly. For example, based on responses received in the survey, employee theft of sensitive information is 10 times costlier than accidental loss on a per-incident basis: hundreds of thousands of dollars versus tens of thousands.
“Insider risk is a real and growing threat and the modern enterprise environment of collaboration with a variety of outside parties creates more opportunities for leakage and theft,” said John Chirapurath, senior director of the Identity and Security Business Group at Microsoft. “This data illustrates that the more a company has to lose in terms of information value, the more criminal activity it will face.”
A Need for Real Assessment and Measurement of Information Security
Despite a wide range in security spending, views on the value of information and the number of security incidents reported among the respondents, nearly every company surveyed rated its security controls to be equally effective.
“Most enterprises do not actually know whether their data security programs work or not, other than by raw incident counting,” according to Forrester Consulting. “‘Compliance’ in all its forms has helped CISOs buy more gear. But it has distracted IT security from its traditional focus: keeping company secrets secure.”
Together, Forrester, Microsoft and RSA are providing a set of recommendations within the study to help enterprises ensure that their information security strategies are appropriately balanced, including:
– Identify the most valuable information assets in the company’s portfolio
– Create a “risk register” of data security risks that document specific threat scenarios
– Assess and reprioritize the IT security program’s balance between compliance and protecting secrets
– Increase vigilance of external and third-party business relationships
– Measure data security program effectiveness
The Forrester Consulting Study sponsored by RSA and Microsoft is available at www.rsa.com/CorporateSecrets and www.microsoft.com/DLP.
Banker Trojans comprised more than 60 percent of new threats created in Q1
PandaLabs Q1 report shows resurgence in traditional viruses after decline in recent years
BlackHat SEO attacks using Apple and Facebook are among cybercriminals preferred strategies
Panda Security involved in takedown of Mariposa, one of the largest botnets on record
PandaLabs has published its Q1 2010 report, analyzing the IT security events and incidents of the first three months of the year. The report can be downloaded for free at: http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/security-info/tools/reports.htm.
As forecasted by PandaLabs, the amount of new malware in circulation has continued to increase at a record pace. In this first quarter, the most prevalent category was once again banker Trojans, accounting for 61 percent of all new malware. Interestingly, the second most prevalent type was traditional viruses, comprising more than 15 percent of all malware, despite having shown a dramatic decrease in recent years. A graph of the types of malware samples received by PandaLabs in Q1 is available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/panda_security/4461973069/
“The growing prevalence of banker Trojans signals to us that online accounts for both consumers and businesses continue to be increasingly attractive financial targets for cybercriminals,” said Sean-Paul Correll, threat researcher at PandaLabs. “In addition, the widespread availability of DIY kits online has spurred new, less technical individuals into the cybercrime business as evidenced by the Mariposa case. The simultaneous growth in traditional virus activity is an interesting trend and we suspect this means that cybercriminals are attempting to draw the attention of anti-virus laboratories away from other seemingly more harmful threats.”
In other areas of IT security, botnets have seen considerable activity in 2010. For example, Panda Security played a key role in dismantling Mariposa, one of the largest botnets known to date, and subsequently detected Mariposa malware on y Vodafone devices. Mariposa stole account information for social media sites and other online e-mail services, usernames and passwords, banking credentials and credit card data through infiltrating an estimated 12.7 million compromised personal, corporate, government and university IP addresses in more than 190 countries. The botnet was shut down and rendered inactive on December 23rd, 2009, thanks to the collaborative effort of different security experts and law enforcement, including Panda Security, Defence Intelligence, the FBI and Spanish Guardia Civil.
In addition, popular online search topics, including Apple’s iPad and Facebook applications, were once again used in BlackHat SEO attacks. Similarly, cybercriminals continue to use social networks to distribute malware, a trend that saw a considerable uptick in 2009 and will continue throughout 2010.