Information Protection and Security

Nearly one-third of federal agencies report at least one cybersecurity incident each day, with more than half reporting such occurrences weekly, according to a survey released Tuesday of 300 federal information security professionals conducted by CDW-Government, a provider of IT wares.

Because they're mobile, they're easy to lose or have stolen.  It may be that your information on the equipment is even more valuable than the equipment itself (not a smart idea on mobile equipment).  Lock mobile equipment with complex passwords and encryption if possible.  Smart phones, and netbooks need maintenance and security, just as your laptop and desktop computers.  Though they have less powerful processors they are still vulnerable to viruses and worms from visiting websites infected with malware, downloading infected applications, and insecure wireless networks.  Thumb drives are a problem because they’re easier to lose, or have stolen. When you copy infected information into the drive it's easily spread to other machines. Protect your mobile information with encryption, and complex passwords, work on a secure network, and beware of  cyber cafes. Stop. Think. Secure IT!
 

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month, and Google paid homage to that fact by offering a brief tutorial on creating stronger passwords.  
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Complaints about phishing have been coming in for a couple of years.  Most of us know what phishing is, and when something sounds like it's too good to be true, it probably is.  

10/5/09 Tim Hayes :  I'd like to warn anyone running a system with a SSH server enabled that there is currently a significant increase in SSH brute-force attacks which have resulted in a couple compromised hosts here at Rutgers recently. The attackers are using simple brute-force methods to guess weak passwords hoping to gain access to either 'root' directly or a user account which has root access. Once compromised the hosts are used to scan and attempt to compromise of other hosts on RUNet and/or the internet.

This type of attack which is resilient against a full hard drive wipe is considered the holy grail of computer hacking because the hardware has been infected.  Once the Apple keyboard (USB or BlueTooth) is infected, it is extremely difficult to detect and the only practical way to get rid of the infection is to throw away the keyboard.
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