Security

Latest Security News

Hot on the heels of The Ministry of Defence publishing Sir Edmund Burton's report into the lost laptops of January 2008, containing the personal details of individuals who expressed interest in joining the Armed Forces, comes news that a senior hospital manager has been suspended after a laptop containing unencrypted personal data of more than 20,000 patients was stole from the NHS staff member's car in an Edinburgh carpark. And in Edinburgh, another furore as a USB memory stick has gone missing also with confidential NHS patient information.

Automatic Number Plate Reading (ANPR) equipment involves the use of special cameras that scan the number plates of passing vehicles and check them out against 100 separate computerised databases. These include every police force in England and Wales and most of Scotland, the Police National Computer, DVLA records and the MIDAS system, to identify vehicles that are untaxed, have no insurance.

Microsoft, Google and PayPal, a unit of eBay, are among the founders of an industry organisation The Information Card Foundation, that hopes to solve the problem of password overload among computer users and create a single industrywide approach to managing identity online that promises to reduce drastically use passwords and create a system that is less vulnerable to fraud.

CCTV cameras are not preventing crime in the UK, but new databases could help. Being deeloped and piloted which include:
Â· A new database of images which is expected to use technology developed by the sports advertising industry to track and identify offenders.
Â· Putting images of suspects in muggings, rape and robbery cases out on the internet from next month.
Â· Building a national CCTV database, incorporating pictures of convicted offenders as well as unidentified suspects. The plans for this have been drawn up, but are on hold while the technology required to carry out automated searches is refined.

ITI Techmedia has signed an exclusive licence to a key element of the technology from its Online Games Development R&D Programme. Metaforic,which provides anti-tamper solutions, enters the software protection market with its Metafortress anti-hack solution using ITI Techmedia technology platform to offer high performance security solutions, designed to protect the software industry from attacks, which currently cost companies around USbn every year.

CCTV manufacturer TeleEye has announced the opening of its new offices in Piccadilly Gardens, ManchesterCCTV surveillance equipment manufacturer TeleEye is pleased to announce the opening of its new offices in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester. The DVR Transmitter specialist is responding to its increased business in the North of England and Scotland in providing a northern base for Account Director, Andy Jackson, and team. Customers, including ADI Gardiner, will benefit from a more local service and closer contact.

Alison DeLauzon thought the snapshots and home videos of her infant son were gone for good when she lost her digital camera while on vacation in Florida. But her camera "phoned home." Equipped with a special memory card with wireless Internet capability, her camera had not only automatically sent her holiday pictures to her computer, but had even uploaded photos of the thieves who swiped her equipment bag after she accidentally left it behind at a restaurant.

Ever since supermarkets and the like have opted not to take cheques, it has been a source of irritation that online shopping deducts immediately from the account, but any transfer into an account can take up to three or four working days. That could be about to change, slowly of course as the Faster Payments Service enables banks to process payments made over the internet or by phone within hours, not days, speeding up the clearing of payments. UK payments association Apacs said that after going live just after mindnight on Tudsday by 7am Wednesday, 898 payments had been made to a value of £461,383.43.

Finjan Inc., a leader in secure web gateway products, has discovered a server controlled by hackers (Crimeserver) containing more than 1.4 Gigabyte of business and personal data stolen from infected PCs. The data included 5,388 unique log files collected in just a three-week period. The files included personal and business e-mails, medical records, and financial log-in and transaction information with, not only credit card and account numbers but also passwords and security codes. Although the trend of using Web exploits to steal and market personal data has been identified for some time, the discovery of the cache still was an eye-opener, said CTO of Finjan, Yuval Ben-Itzhak.

Atmel Corporation has ben recognised for its development of the FingerChip fingerprint sensor technology at the 2008 Frost & Sullivan Southeast Asia Industrial Technologies awards presentation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Yang Chiah Yee, VO of Asian Sales for Atmel, accepted the award on behalf of the Atmel FingerChip team.

Technology can retrieve call records, text messages, photographs and videos from handsets damaged beyond use is available from Forensic Telecommunications Services (FTS) whose skills are examining record numbers of phones, as well as PDAs, memory sticks and satellite navigation systems and with their expertise helping to solve criminal cases.

In a wonderful blog, spotted by Out-law.com, Symantec researcher Liam OMurchu spells out a classic tale of a software biter being bit. The problem: You develop a software package that you want to sell in the underground community. However, your buyers are not the most reputable/trustworthy people. How do you prevent your product from being purchased once and then distributed freely afterwards? How do you enforce your Ã¢ï¿½ï¿½copyrightÃ¢ï¿½ï¿½?
The solution: Ask the antivirus companies to help you out.

Neither the toothpaste, nor the Centre for Renewable Erergy Systems Technoloyg at Loughborough Universit (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/crest/ ) CREST or the Council of Registered Ethical Security Testers has been launched to create standards and qualification for penetration testing of computer systems. Already an established and widely accepted method of assuring information security. the commercial IT security industry has until now been largely free of standards and professional qualifications. These factors inspired a number of the leading providers of penetration testing services to collaborate and today launch the industry association, CREST

Documents released under freedom of information law last year revealed that the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) was concerned about 1,000 "shortfalls" with equipment and procedures at the Gravel Gerties, writes Environment Editor, Rob Edwards in the Sunday Herald. These included deficiencies in roofs, doors, glove boxes, hoists, fire dampers, gas cylinders, cables and valves. The inevitable knock-on affect will impact on the Clyde naval bases of Coulport and Faslane

Almost three-quarters of businesses want a central or national body to deal with e-crime in the UK, says a recent report by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) putting the cost of crime against business at £12.6bn, over a sixth of the total cost of all crime in the UK. Now Paul Simmonds, former chief information and security officer at chemicals giant ICI has highlighted the lack of a national police unit dealing with online crime. Perhaps Scotland should bid to set up e-Yard.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is urging firms to change their attitude to data security and do more to help prevent their customers falling victim to identity fraud and other types of financial crime. The warning follows an FSA review of systems and controls for data security at 39 firms including banks, building societies, insurance companies and financial advisers.

Senior police officers have hailed electronics notepads as a "great success" that had slashed red tape. But rank-and-file Lothians and Borders officers yesterday passed a damning verdict on electronic notepads. Hundreds of personal data administrators – or PDAs – were introduced last year at a cost of more than £600,000. Replacing notepads and pens, the PDAs are meant to allow witness statements and other information from crime scenes to downloaded straight on to a computer and stored.

Most employees do not understand business continuity, or whether their firm has such a plan, according to new research.Carried out by BT, the study found that three-quarters of staff do not know if their firm has a plan, or what it involves. For them, the British Standard Institute 3rd annual Business Continuity Management on day conference is being held 18 months on from the publication of the first British Standard on Business Continuity: BS 25999-1.

A pirated DVD factory in an Edinburgh house in the Oxgangs area has been raided by police who, after receiving intelligence that the home was being used as the centre for a large-scale piracy operation. They seized £750,000 worth of counterfeit goods which included a laptop computer along with a number of hard drives, two multi-burners, and 1000 blank discs. The police haul also included 5975 movie DVDs, 2300 MP3 discs, 300 video games, 868 computer software discs, and 885 pornographic DVDs.

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