The US government is one of the most targeted entities on the internet with daily attacks and other moves to get secrets for profit, selling them on the black-market to the highest bidder. Such moves can tax users so much that they end up in debt often even without suspicion that something happened to them while using the internet. Thankfully, the US has had a great improvement of IT security during the previous years, beefing up and placing newer and better defenses yearly. Not the same can be said for the UK government on the same area where government highly confidential information can be bought as an added bonus off eBay contained in a laptop which could also have belonged to the government. So muck for top secret?!!!?

The global data center service industry has been relatively flourishing despite the prevailing economic difficulties in the past couple of years. Business continue to survive, and many of these businesses rely on data center providers for their information handling needs.

Perhaps one indication that the industry is thriving is the recent news that NTT Communications made a move to acquire Secode AB, a leading name in the managed-security and security-consulting arena in Northern Europe. This move has been hailed by many as beneficial to all the parties involved.

NTT Communications is the long distance and international arm of the well known company, NTT. Having established the brand worldwide, it has been the main choice of many businesses. NTT Communications offer various data center services to its customers from all corners of the world. With this acquisition, it only hopes to further strengthen its services in terms of security.

NTT Communications offers data center services in more than 31 cities in 20 countries/regions. Any client can expect excellent quality, characterized by:

• Full-scale preparations for power outage and fire disaster.
• Green data center equipped with efficient cooling facilities.
• Security system installing the latest authentication methods.
• 24 ⁄ 7 operation and maintenance system
• System redundancy in power supply, air conditioning and network.
• Stable network achieved by using backbones and access lines from multiple carriers
• Quality is certified by NTT Communications Data Center standards.

While the acquisition involves a company local to a certain region, the effects on the security of the data center services of NTT shall certainly be felt system-wide, geographic barriers notwithstanding.

These companies have long been in the eyes of criminals but they have fallen prey to another from of the same people with a different glorified name, cyber-criminals. These criminals nonetheless are after only one thing, and that is to get stuff on other people’s expense which has cost companies millions in lost profits every year. Citibank, Bank of America, HSBC, AT&T and Sprint are just some of them. These thieves in sheep’s clothing do this through phishing site’s, system intrusion through backdoors and many other methods which change as they are discovered but not after they go away with tons of free stuff.

Many attempts by business and even governments to block unauthorized internet access and usage has failed miserably for the internet has broken out of the wired form giving it added access points with the advent of wireless technology. Mobile computing products are gaining ground as offices go into the wireless office. The mischief occurs when an unsuspecting user does a search and gets a seemingly relevant list of results which have been in fact loaded with malicious code that can trick people into believing they are at a relevant site which is in fact a phishing site that takes information from them then passes them onto the valid site without even knowing any malicious activity has occurred.

Cyber-criminals have been found to be using search engines to inject unauthorized code into search engine results that target or use familiar sites such as Torrent Reactor and ZDnet leaving many vulnerable to attack. They have capitalized on the process where search engines collect and collate relevant results placing code in between the reflected results making searching on them quite risky for many. One of these so-called piggy-back cases had a site associated with Russian Business Network and having visitors tot he site install a fake antivirus program which obtains information on the unsuspecting visitor. These types of attacks can have more dangerous consequences such as the depositing of malicious code into servers through workstations used by employees who are at work.

As specified in the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act, all Federal agencies are to regularly be checked with regards to information security. The tests are done by the various security agencies and by independent security developers to see if government offices are protected from cyber crime and that the measures they have are working as designed. Most Federal agencies are protected by their custom security networks which allow them to be treated as a separate entity rather than part of a big federal network. Being separated into smaller networks allows them to be treated locally for any problems with malware isolating them from the rest of the system. The grade for this year is expected to be at C- as opposed to D+ that they got last year. This would be a sign that they are indeed getting better at protecting their respective backyards but would also show the need for more stringent methods. 24 Federal agencies are part of the analysis and they are all tested using varying methods and approaches to see the effectiveness of their Cyber-defenses.

If you have a MySpace or Facebook account, you may be a prime target of cyberattackers. They usually do this by sending Trojans through apps or widgets that your friends sent you. According to researchers at Finjan, cyberattackers are now going to these social networking sites such to get more victims.

“Attacks will become more sophisticated by combining several services in order to heighten infection ratios and decrease the detection rate, while providing more robust and scalable attack frameworks,” Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer, Finjan, said in a news release. “The focus will be on trojan technology as it enables maximum flexibility in terms of command and control. This adds another potentially malicious element to the ‘legitimate’ web traffic that needs to be examined by security solutions.”

In short, before installing the app or widget that your friend sent you, confirm if it came from them. If it didn’t, kindly delete it immediately. If it did come from them, research on the app or widget from previous users.

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The IT industry hailed the coming of the social network as the next step in the evolution of the internet, and it truly is. But as much as we spend more time on our computers in the office and even when we get home, we expose ourselves to more and more threats, more than we could handle. In Europe, the trend in crime has moved into the mainstream internet with many crime organizations shifting from risky manual labor to safer online communications and operations. The various security leaks that resulted in millions of personal records being either lost or stolen have mounted to immeasurable levels the British government had to enforce stiffer data management protocol.

It would also speed up booking and flight scheduling for if use din conjunction with their automated booking and ticketing system it would indeed lessen the length of lines at airports. The most significant problem with RFID is that it is an active system that can be accessed, re-programmed and cloned into a number of identical copies, defeating the security purpose it was said to defeat. RFID tags unlike passive tags are easier to re-program for a user with the right tool can detect the needed information from a passport, encode it onto a new one and then be off on his way without anybody knowing about it. Tools and methods are widely available to programmers and hackers so the high-tech passport is truly just another waste of taxpayer money.

Europe has started to issue RFID passports that have unique codes that identify it as a fingerprint. The only problem is that the technology also opens a whole new avenue for hackers for a well-equipped person can remotely detect a passport with the right equipment from a distance without that person even knowing the data exchange. The move by the UK to move into high-tech passports was to lessen eh time it took to verify the true identity of the holders and of the passport itself. Fake passports would have none of the pre-set information encoded from the issuing office so they can easily be detected and security does the rest.