News
Jan
In comments that support Array’s ranking in the new report, IDC analysts note that the company’s WAN optimization solution has “increased its chances of cracking bigger deals and positioning themselves as an end-to-end solution provider in the ADC space.”
According to IDC, drivers of Array’s leading position in the India market include the ability to close deals in the lucrative government and banking and financial services industry (BFSI) markets, as well as the ability to offer holistic ADC and WAN solutions with custom costing to potential customers. Although Cisco still leads – due to volume WAN optimization sales – Array is mounting a challenge by way of continued growth in the WAN optimization space.
Mr. Shibu Paul, Country Manager at Array Networks said, “IDC is a respected authority tracking the markets Array serves, and the local IDC team in India has a superior understanding of vendors, partners and customers in the application delivery networking space. The Array team has been working tirelessly to serve our customers, assist our partners and enhance our offerings, and I am extremely pleased to see our efforts paying off as reflected in the new IDC market report.”
“In addition to growing traction in the enterprise based on its suite of application delivery networking solutions, Array is also opening up new opportunities with its line of software appliances which can be hosted on any virtualized server to break price barriers and make solutions more affordable to SMBs,” said Manoj Iyer, IDC’s market analyst for enterprise networking in India. “With the ability to support a broad range of customers and a go-to-market strategy focused on educating partners its load balancing, WAN optimization, enterprise mobility, high availability, BYOD and application acceleration solutions, Array is well positioned to further increase their market share in the application delivery networking market.”
You can read the original article here.
Jan
In particular, the overhead of running multiple concurrent antivirus scanners on a single host can affect performance and scalability. Meanwhile, the constant starting, stopping, and cloning of virtual machines can leave systems unprotected.
A new Sophos whitepaper explores these challenges and presents two effective approaches to securing your virtual machines without sacrificing performance: agentless antivirus and virtualization-optimized endpoint security. Simultaneous scheduled or on-demand scans can lead to a “scan storm,” increasing resource use and decreasing system performance.
“Scan storms occur when a host’s resources are overwhelmed by many virtual machines (VM) running antivirus scans at the same time. Because each VM is engaged in nearly identical behavior requiring multiple input/output (I/O) operations and substantial CPU processing, data throughput and system response time can slow noticeably. Even an otherwise speedy SAN or local storage array can be affected by the sheer volume of simultaneous read requests.”
The paper also covers how to choose the best approach and the right Sophos product (Sophos Antivirus for vShield, Sophos Server Protection, or Sophos Endpoint Antivirus) for your needs.
Download “Two Great Ways to Protect Your Virtual Machines From Malware” to learn more about how to deliver performance and security in your virtual data center (registration required).
You can read the original article here.
Jan
And we’ve been named a Visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Mobility Management. Please contact technical support if you need more information or guidance.
What’s available in Sophos Mobile Control 4.0
SMC offers a full range of enterprise mobility management features, including:
- Central management of your mobile devices, content and applications with a user-centric approach
- Robust security protection with built-in anti-malware and web filtering
- Mobile content management with individual file encryption, ensuring encryption without compromise on your devices
- Reduced risk of data breaches with integrated Network Access Control
- Easy deployment and management with user based pricing, simplifying your budget
Highlights
- Use a simple role-based web console
- Push out policies and apps over the air
- Assign policies based on users’ Active Directory groups
- Regularly check for device compliance
- Remotely locate, lock and wipe devices
- Secure mobile content on iOS devices
- Filter web pages by category on Android devices
- You can choose either on-premise or SaaS deployment, or as a subscription option with Sophos Cloud.
Learn more about the great features in Sophos Mobile Control, or sign up for a free trial.
And find out how Sophos gives our customers security that’s simply better.
You can read the original article, here.
Jan
One of Negobot’s creators, Dr. Carlos Laorden, told the BBC that past chat bots have tended to be too predictable: “Their behaviour and interest in a conversation are flat, which is a problem when attempting to detect untrustworthy targets like paedophiles.” The most innovative aspect of Negobot may be a key differentiator that makes it appear more lifelike: namely, the incorporation of the advanced decision-making strategies used in game theory. In a paper about their creation, the researchers describe how they’ve taught the robot to consider a conversation itself as a game.
For example, the bot identifies the best strategies to achieve its goal in what its programmers have taught it to understand as a competitive game. Negobot’s goal is to collect the information that can help to determine if a subject involved in a conversation has paedophile tendencies, all the while maintaining a convincing, kid-like prattle, sprinkled with slang and misspellings, so the subject doesn’t get suspicious. Negobot keeps track of its conversations with all users, both for future references and to keep a record that could be sent to the authorities if, in fact, the subject is determined to be a paedophile.
The conversation starts out neutral. The bot gives off only brief, trivial information, including name, age, gender and hometown. If the subject wants to keep talking, the bot may talk about favorite films, music, drugs, or family issues, but it doesn’t get explicit until sex comes into the conversation. The bot provides more personal information at higher levels, and it doesn’t shy away from sexual content. The Negobot will try to string along conversationalists who want to leave, with tactics such as asking for help with family, bullying or other typical adolescent problems. If the subject is sick of the conversation and uses less polite language to try to leave, the bot acts like a victim – a youngster nobody pays attention to and who just wants affection from somebody. Robot. Image courtesy of Shutterstock.From there, if the subject has stopped talking to the bot, the bot tries to exchange sex for affection. Is this starting to sound uncomfortably like entrapment?
That’s exactly what gets some experts worried. John Carr, a UK government adviser on child protection, told the BBC that overburdened police could be aided by the technology, but the software could well cross the line and entice people to do things they otherwise might not: “Undercover operations are extremely resource-intensive and delicate things to do. It’s absolutely vital that you don’t cross a line into entrapment which will foil any potential prosecution.” The BBC reports that Negobot has been field-tested on Google chat and could be translated into other languages. Its researchers admit that Negobot has limitations – it doesn’t, for example, understand irony.
Still, it sounds like a promising start to address the alarming rate of child sexual abuse on the internet. Hopefully, the researchers will keep it reined in so as to avoid entrapment – a morally questionable road that could, as Carr pointed out, ruin the chances for prosecutorial success. What do you think? Are you comfortable with the premise, or does the chances of entrapment sour the concept for you?
You can read the original article, here.
Jan
In addition to delivering iOS 7 support, Sophos announced an update for customers to manage the new business-focused features of Apple’s latest version from the easy-to-use Sophos web-based console, deployed either on-premise or as Software as a Service (SaaS).
According to Gartner, Apple iOS 7 includes more enterprise enhancements than any release since iOS 4.0 introduced mobile device management APIs. Version 3.6 of Sophos Mobile Control enables enterprises of all sizes to protect corporate data, with many new enhancements, including:
- Separation of company and personal data
- Per app VPN
- A new volume purchasing program (VPP)
- Remote configuration of apps
“Sophos Mobile Control allows us to easily manage our existing devices while simultaneously adding new devices safely into our organization,” said Jeri Sample, IT Manager, Meadville Medical Center, an outstanding community medical center in Meadville, Pennsylvania. “It is important for us to keep patient data secure. With accelerated deployment, ease of management, and complete visibility, SMC makes Sophos the right choice on behalf of our staff and our patients.”
“Mobile devices in the workplace are the rule, not the exception,” said John Shaw, Vice President for end user security products at Sophos. “Sophos Mobile Control provides simple to deploy mobile device management and security that will keep employees happy and productive, minimize the workload for IT, and give managers confidence that the company’s data is protected. We think iOS 7 is a huge step forward in enabling personal devices to be used securely at work, and are delighted to be extending the benefits to our partners and customers.”
To learn more about Sophos Mobile Control, please visit http://www.sophos.com/mobile.
Jan
The infected ads were served to visitors of the Yahoo homepage over a four-day period last week. Some of the malware that was served up could turn the infected computers into Bitcoin miners. The malware that Yahoo unknowingly served up attacked flaws in Java on the victim machines. Yahoo says that the malware was served up from December 31 to January 3 on its European sites.
Yahoo is being criticized for not doing anything to help the owners of computers infected with malware served from its site.
The web company has promised to monitor and block any ads being used for serving malware. Estimates are that around 27000 infections resulted every hour the ads containing the malware were served. Some malware installed by the rogue ads also installed ZeuS, which tries to steal banking information.
You can read the original article at SlashGear.
Jan
The new Sophos solution helps IT professionals confidently implement BYOD policies and provides users the flexibility they demand to stay productive and safe. It supports iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 devices.
To learn more about SMC 4.0, check out this video.
SMC 4.0: Mobile Encryption, Integrated Security and User-Centricity
SMC 4.0 provides a simple, hassle-free and comprehensive approach to protecting mobile devices. With Mobile Content Management for iOS devices, SMC is the only EMM solution to offer file-level encryption, which gates access to each file, to protect the data in the office and on the go. SMC also delivers integrated security against malware and malicious web sites for Android devices, which account for 80 percent of smartphone operating systems* worldwide as well as the majority of mobile malware threats. The number of unique pieces of mobile malware seen by SophosLabs has now reached almost 900,000 and is growing rapidly.
With web protection for Android, IT administrators can select web site categories to control access and block data-stealing or inappropriate web pages. SMC 4.0 also provides unique integration with Sophos UTM, Checkpoint and Cisco to provide network access control. Compromised devices are isolated from the network, protecting the organization’s assets from malware on mobile devices. SMC’s user-centric deployment, management and pricing greatly simplifies administration. With an intuitive web-based management console, IT administrators can provide their users with a self-service portal to change passwords, register devices and report lost or stolen devices.
You can read the original article here.
Jan
Sophos received top marks in the latest report from AV-Comparatives, a leading international testing lab. The report, titled “Impact of Anti-Virus Software on System Performance,” evaluated twenty one of the world’s leading security products on a PC running under Windows 7.
The testing lab prepared a total of 545 infection scenarios, and Sophos’ antivirus offering tied for the highest score among the products reviewed. It also received an “Advanced +” award, based on the lab’s assessment of the overall results.
“We value the work of independent testing labs like AV-Comparatives, as they help vendors like Sophos to strengthen our offerings, while providing consumers and businesses great insight so that they can make better informed decisions,” said Mark Harris, vice president, engineering, Sophos. “This latest recognition validates the great work of our team, which is committed to developing complete security solutions to combat advanced threats.”
In related testing news, Virus Bulletin, another leading independent lab awarded Sophos with a VBSpam award for its comparative anti-spam testing. This marks the 20th time that Sophos has received this honor for its Sophos Email Appliance. Additionally, Sophos recently received a VB100 award for Sophos Endpoint Security and Control as part of Virus Bulletin’s comparative review on Windows XP Professional SP3.
Click here to see the original article.
Jan
Easy to deploy and simple to manage, Sophos Cloud gives Sophos partners and IT managers at enterprises of all sizes the ability to manage and maintain endpoint security to protect all users, regardless of physical location, via the cloud-based service. The launch of Sophos Cloud is the first step in the company’s aggressive strategy of cloud-enabling its entire portfolio. In addition, Sophos will continue to innovate and extend its ‘on-prem’ security software, providing IT professionals choice in how to best manage IT security in their environment.
Kris Hagerman, chief executive officer for Sophos, said, “Sophos Cloud is the answer to the constant struggle IT teams face in protecting and securing their enterprises. These IT teams may be as small as a single person, but the constant threats and challenges they face could overwhelm an army. To come to their rescue, we’re thrilled to deliver Sophos Cloud – it will be one of our key strategic priorities as we execute on our vision of being the best in the world at delivering complete and powerful IT security to small and mid-market enterprises and organizations of any size looking to simplify their IT security operations“.
With the management console hosted by Sophos Cloud, there is no server set up and service can be deployed instantly, providing complete security coverage everywhere – simply. Sophos Cloud delivers all the essential endpoint protection a company needs without any of the complexity traditionally associated with security management. The service is also consistent with Sophos’ ongoing focus and commitment to be a “Channel First” company.
“The ability to administer our security with Sophos Cloud allows us to better manage our resources and enables us to effectively utilize our time and money. The service was easy for us to implement, and it seamlessly integrated into our environment,” said David Fox, IT Consultant, Neptune Terminals.
“Small and medium businesses are especially challenged regarding IT security. They are targets and must meet security best practices yet are resource constrained,” said Charles Kolodgy, Research Vice President for IDC.
“Sophos Cloud is a welcome addition. Its features can remove some of the complexity tied to security management thus allowing small and mid-market businesses to improve security without taxing their resources”. “As an organization that specializes in IT security and services, M3Corp has had a valuable partnership with Sophos for more than 4 years. Sophos Cloud will help us extend that partnership to quickly deliver cloud security that is easy to deploy and manage, while providing the most efficient and economical security solution to all of our customers throughout Brazil. M3Corp’s partnership with Sophos ensures that our customers will be fully protected from all types of threats,” states Antonio Mocelim, Sales Director, M3Corp.
Availability
Sophos Cloud is currently available. Online 30-day trials are available by visiting: www.sophos.com/cloud
Jan
With version 6.1 we’re addressing the two biggest issues in encryption – performance and usability – by leveraging native operating system (OS) encryption for better performance; and delivering multi-platform management across all devices and cloud environments.
SafeGuard Enterprise also solves the major challenge of managing encryption across multiple platforms, devices, and cloud environments. Users and IT staff are now able to share data safely between Windows, Mac and mobile devices – securing data wherever it lives and wherever it is sent.
Managing multiple devices no longer means managing multiple consoles, so IT can fully embrace encryption to support their users. The Sophos encryption approach enables users to safely work the way they need to – sharing files between users, partners and customers via the cloud and the devices they use.
Sophos is the only vendor to offer native device encryption, cloud, mobile, removable and file share encryption in one centrally managed solution, providing unmatched security, performance, and an intuitive user experience.
What’s New in SafeGuard Enterprise 6.1
- With SafeGuard Enterprise you can manage Microsoft BitLocker for Windows or Mac FileVault 2.
- Now with support for Windows 8, and file and disk encryption on Macs, SafeGuard covers more operating systems and platforms.
- Simplified keyring creation grants you seamless, centralized management. With this newest release, you can save time with our keyring creation that requires no repeat login.
- Use a single console to manage full-disk, removable media, file-share, and cloud storage encryption
- Get up-to-date security status for all your devices with reporting and auditing that lets you monitor and enforce compliance with internal policies and external regulations.
You can sign-up for a free 30-day trial here.
Jan
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) were both designed to help counteract this issue by helping legitimate senders prove that their email isn’t forged. Now you can implement anti-spam rules in the Sophos Email Appliance that act on the presence or lack of both SPF and DKIM validation and you can even add your own DKIM signatures to outbound mail, providing an added layer of trust to email originating from your organization.
As you would expect, enabling SPF or DKIM policy rules couldn’t be simpler. With just a couple of clicks you can easily add sender validation using these frameworks to your spam evaluation criteria.
But that’s not all, with v3.8 we’ve also enabled wildcards for selecting sub-domains for “Select Users” and “Custom Groups” when setting up policy and a few more enhancements. This release also includes a patch for the OpenSSL man-in-the-middle vulnerability. You can read all about the updates in the release notes.
Sophos Email Appliance Documentation and Release Notes. Existing email appliance customers will receive this automatically during your next specified update window.
You can read the original article, here.
Jan
Keenan brings more than 20 years of sales and sales management experience to Sophos, including 13 years with SonicWALL, where he most recently built a new sales organization for mid-market accounts and developed the division’s channel strategy. As vice president of North America Sales, Keenan grew the business by fostering key relationships with the company’s channel partners.
“John Keenan is widely respected by the security channel, and I am thrilled to welcome him to Sophos. He brings a proven track record of success in the security space and has winning experience in leading channel and sales teams,” said Michael Valentine, senior vice president of sales for Sophos. “Every day, the Sophos team is working hard to be the preferred vendor in security for the channel and customers. Our products, our people and our partner programs continue to gain industry accolades. In bringing John aboard, we have an ideal leader for continued growth in our North American business.”
“I am excited to join Sophos; the company’s value proposition of ‘security made simple’ clearly resonates with customers and the channel,” said Keenan. “The company’s relentless focus on empowering the channel, a best-in-class portfolio of endpoint, mobile, server and network solutions, and the opportunity to contribute to Mike Valentine’s winning team made my decision to join Sophos an easy one.”
Jan
Learn How Balance and MAX Routers Team Up for Unbreakable VPNs
The Balance lineup uses Peplink SpeedFusion technology to integrate seamlessly with MAX cellular routers and deliver unstoppable VPNs in a wide variety of applications. To see how, visit our updated Balance and Unbreakable VPN pages. Filled with helpful deployment diagrams and technology highlights, they’re a great way to learn more about fast, reliable, and affordable Peplink solutions for retail, enterprise, public safety, and much more.
You can read more here.
Jan
- Πως μοιάζει το νέο Κέντρο Διαχείρισης;
- Ποια λειτουργικά συστήματα υποστηρίζονται και ποιοι clients είναι διαθέσιμοι;
- Ποια είναι η διαφορά μεταξύ των UEFI και BIOS και γιατί χρειάζεται να το ξέρετε αυτό όταν πουλάτε ή εγκαθιστάτε το SGN;
- Μπορούμε να υποθέσουμε ότι η Native (Γηγενή) Κρυπτογράφηση είναι ίδια με το SafeGuard Enterprise Device Encryption;
- Μπορούν οι υπολογιστές Mac της Apple να διαχειρίζονται κεντρικά;
- Τι είναι και γιατί το FileVault 2 ενδέχεται να είναι απαραίτητο;
- Τι περιλαμβάνει η άδεια χρήσης SGN;
Σήμερα, ευαίσθητα δεδομένα βρίσκονται παντού, στο cloud, σε φορητές συσκευές και προσωπικούς υπολογιστές. Ο στόχος είναι η προστασία τους, χωρίς θυσίες στην απόδοση και η Sophos έχει τη λύση με το SafeGuard Enterprise 6.1, το οποίο προσφέρει κρυπτογράφηση, οπουδήποτε και αν βρίσκονται τα δεδομένα –σε υπολογιστές Windows, Mac, σε αφαιρούμενα μέσα αποθήκευσης, σε δίσκους στο δίκτυο, σε φορητές συσκευές ή στο cloud, χωρίς καμία επίπτωση στην απόδοση.
Με το SafeGuard Enterprise 6.1, η Sophos διευθετεί τα δύο μεγαλύτερα ζητήματα στην κρυπτογράφηση -την απόδοση και τη χρηστικότητα- εκμεταλλευόμενη την ενσωματωμένη κρυπτογράφηση του λειτουργικού συστήματος (Bitlocker στα Windows, FileVault 2 για Mac) για καλύτερη απόδοση και προσφέροντας multi-platform διαχείριση για όλες τις συσκευές και τα περιβάλλοντα cloud.
Θέλετε να μάθετε περισσότερα;
Σας περιμένουμε στο 4o Infocom Security όπου απαντάμε στις προκλήσεις του μέλλοντος.
Ώρα 12:30 – 14:15 στην 2η ενότητα «Ευφυείς Λύσεις για την Προστασία των Πληροφοριών»
Jan
Although it can be exploited in some cases, the good news is that not all implementations can be exploited, and only certain services and applications allow a hacker to exploit this issue. Please see our article on Naked Security for an explanation of the vulnerability itself.
In addition, we have examined our products and we are confident that the Shellshock vulnerability can’t be exploited in any Sophos product. Our IT systems have also been patched or were not vulnerable. For the latest information on how this bug affects Sophos products, please refer to our knowledgebase article from Sophos Support.
You can read the original article, here.
Jan
She writes: “I personally notified the very first bounty recipient via email today that his submission for the Internet Explorer 11 Preview Bug Bounty is confirmed and validated. (Translation: He’s getting paid.)“.
She hasn’t yet named names or put a price tag on the first recipient. In fact, there are already multiple researchers who’ll be receiving bounty payouts. MSRC plans to hook up those researchers who want to be publicly recognized for their contributions on an acknowledgement page on its bounty web site. “Stay tuned, as it will come soon“, Moussouris says.
What Microsoft can share at this point are these two key results:
- They’re getting more submissions, earlier. Microsoft has received more vulnerability reports in the first two weeks of its bounty programs than it typically would in an average month. It shows that the strategy for getting more vulnerability reports earlier in the release cycle is working, it says.
- They’re attracting new researchers. Researchers who’ve rarely, or even never, reported directly to Microsoft are now choosing to talk directly to the company. Microsoft interprets that as proof that its strategy to hear from people it usually doesn’t hear from is bearing fruit.
As Moussouris explains it, Microsoft was canny in how it chose to approach the vulnerability market. There’s the black market, where zero-day bugs fetch the highest prices. Then there’s the gray market, where bug-hunting mercenaries make a mint selling information about exploit techniques and unpatched vulnerabilities to corporations and nation states. Microsoft didn’t go there. Instead, it focused on the white market: the place where buyers are after vulnerability information for defensive use, whether it’s vendors themselves (via bounty programs) or a broker who uses the vulnerabilities for their own protection services or threat reports. Moussouris says that three years ago, white-hat bug hunters were passing up cash on the white market and were instead mostly coming to Microsoft directly. That changed over the past few years. Microsoft has witnessed researchers increasingly holding bugs back to see what the going rate might reach on the various markets, typically after Microsoft has released code to manufacturing. The way Microsoft figures it, it’s identified a gap in the market that its new bounty program is filling: namely, in the pre-release, or beta, period.
Moussouris writes: “It’s not about offering the most money, but rather about putting attractive bounties out at times where there are few buyers (if any)… Trying to be the highest bidder is a checkers move, and we’re playing chess“.
There is data out there that bolster Moussouris’ contention that strategically structured, well-timed bounty programs are a good investment. A study recently released by the University of California, Berkeley reports that paying bounties to independent security researchers is a better investment than hiring employees to do it. Piggy and mouse. Image from ShutterstockFor example, Google’s paid out about $580,000 over three years for 501 Chrome bugs, and Firefox has paid out about $570,000 over the same period for 190 bugs. Compare that with just one full-time salaried security researcher digging through code, at, say, $100,000 per year, and the savings can be huge.
You can read the original article, here.
Jan
Our poll offered readers the chance to vote for one of the six most popular web browsers – Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and Chromium – and asked which you trusted the most. Mozilla’s Firefox, the linear descendant of both Netscape Navigator and the original ‘graphical web browser’ the NCSA Mosaic, was a runaway winner. Firefox accrued almost double the number of votes of its nearest rival, Google Chrome, and more than six times the votes awarded to perennial rival and fellow ‘browser wars’ veteran Internet Explorer.
The results are even more emphatic when you consider how many people actually use each browser. Below is a table that compares the number of votes each browser received in the poll against the number of unique article pageviews from each of those browsers over the same period.
Results are ranked in order of conversion rate – the rate at which page views by a given browser correlate with votes for that browser (Chrome and Chromium identify themselves in the same way and we can’t separate their unique page views so their results are combined in this table).
Top of the table is Opera which was the only browser that scored more votes for trustworthiness than it had users, although it did so with much smaller totals than its competitors. You could probably sum up the entire history of the Opera browser with the phrase “small but loyal following” and despite the regard in which its users hold it Opera seems destined to remain the perennial bridesmaid of the browser world. The poor showing of Internet Explorer is notable but perhaps not surprising given that it is often imposed on users as a matter of corporate policy. What stands out at me is the difference between the Mozilla and Google products. Both browsers are well established and well known open source projects, they both run on Windows, Mac and Linux and unlike Explorer or Safari neither come bundled with an operating system.
Perhaps Chrome users are more cynical or more realistic about where they place their trust. Or perhaps people who choose Chrome are also people who don’t vote in internet polls. We don’t know but I suspect, as the comments on our poll seem to suggest, that the reason for Chrome’s poor showing is that Google’s claim to Do No Evil is simply no longer convincing. The untrustworthiness of Google is a consistent theme across the most highly rated comments on the poll:
“frankly I trust Google the least, as they have too many data points for comparison.
I don’t trust Google as far as I could throw ’em. As a company, it’s entirely uninterested in my security or privacy, especially if it can make money by selling my personal information.
Trusting any software completely is a bit foolish, but anyone who actively trusts Chrome is a good subject for psychological study.”
You get the idea. Of course this is only an online poll and and not a scientific experiment so my conclusions should be taken with a liberal pinch of salt.
You can read the original article, here.
Jan
Syrian Eagle told Mashable that Microsoft deserves what it got because it’s hawking data to US snoops and multiple governments. The SEA will publish proof of the allegations, Syrian Eagle said: “Microsoft is monitoring emails accounts and selling the data for the American intelligence and other governments. And we will publish more details and documents that prove it. Microsoft is not our enemy but what they are doing affected the SEA.”
On Saturday, the pro-Assad group took over the @MSFTnews and @XboxSupport Twitter accounts and posted various messages hashtagged “SEA”, according to Mashable. One read: “Don’t use Microsoft emails (Hotmail, outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments.” The takeovers appear to have been brief: the messages are no longer live, and a Microsoft spokesperson sent this statement to The Register: “Microsoft is aware of targeted cyberattacks that temporarily affected the Xbox Support and Microsoft News Twitter accounts. The accounts were quickly reset and we can confirm that no customer information was compromised.”
The attackers also Tweeted a screenshot of what appears to be a takeover of The Official Microsoft Blog at blogs.technet.com. Microsoft didn’t put out a statement about the alleged attack, but Mashable says its reporters saw it in action and confirmed that it lasted about an hour. Mashable also posted a screenshot showing multiple “Syrian Army Was Here” messages on the defaced site.
Others reported that the blog was either forcing a redirect to the SEA’s site or displaying the defaced blog. At any rate, the blog is now under the company’s control. Microsoft responded to the SEA charges about monitoring email by sending this statement to Mashable: “We’re actively investigating issues and are focused on protecting our employees and corporate network. Microsoft is sometimes obligated to comply with legal orders from governments around the world and provides customer data only in response to specific, targeted, legal demands”.
You can read the original article here.
Jan
So here are some tips on how you can use Sophos products to maintain security for your yet-to-be-decommissioned XP systems during the transition period.
1. Run the Sophos endpoint
With the Sophos endpoint you will of course get our award-winning anti-malware scanner, but you’ll also get Host Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS), Application Control, and Patch Assessment (if you are licensed for it).
- Using HIPS is easy and requires no work on your part — HIPS is enabled by default. The guys and gals at SophosLabs are constantly tweaking the detection rules for HIPS to make sure we detect and block exploits of new vulnerabilities.
- By using Application Control you reduce the threat surface further by blocking thousands of applications from running at all.
- Bonus tip: While you are at it, make sure you uninstall any software on your XP systems that isn’t absolutely necessary.
- Our endpoint is also available with Patch Assessment. Use this to find vulnerable software on your XP machines. Missing patches will be listed in order of priority starting with the most critical (currently exploited), making it easy for you to decide where to start.
2. Use Sophos Client Firewall
Sometimes overlooked, the client firewall allows you to really lock down the machine as much as you like — to the point of making it near unusable if you so wish!
- Train the firewall to only allow traffic to and from your known good processes.
- You can also enable checksumming to identify known processes. It’s more secure, but will require more work from your side to maintain.
- You can also manage ICMP request to stop the system from responding to Ping requests.
Learn more about Sophos products
Those are the choices for the top two technologies you really should consider for any remaining XP systems. There are more you can use. I haven’t mentioned Device Control, Data Control, Web Control or Full-Disk Encryption — they all play a part in endpoint security. Or you may want to take it one step further and take full control of the network traffic using our SG Series network appliances. Your requirements will of course vary. In any case, we will have a product that can help you stay secure and it will be as easy as possible to implement.
You can read the original article here.
Jan
There’s definitely an update coming next Tuesday, 18 June 2013, and you might as well get ready for it now if you haven’t already. The details of what will be fixed aren’t a matter of public record yet, so we can’t spell them out for you in detail. Nevertheless, Oracle has published a very brief pre-announcement to remind us of the importance of this month’s fixes. The good news is that lots of security vulnerabilities have been repaired – 40 in total, of which all but three are RCEs, or remote code execution holes.
That’s where untrusted content sent over the network might be able to trick Java into performing operations that really ought to be limited to already-installed, trusted code. In short, an RCE means that you could get infected by malware simply by looking around online, without explicitly downloading, authorising or even noticing the malware being installed.
There are two handy ways to reduce this RCE risk:
· Apply Oracle’s patches as soon as practicable. You can turn on fully-automatic updating if you like.
· Turn off Java in your browser, so that web-based Java applets can’t run at all.
Click here to see the original article.