Archive for the ‘social media series’ Category

Our new Intrusion Detection and Prevention system launches today

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

A couple of months ago, I came up with a ‘wishlist’ (which I mentioned on this blog) for the ideal Intrusion Detection and Prevention system. This was based on research that we have been doing over a period of time to come up with a unified platform that combines existing IDP systems and approaches.

Today, we’re launching our new IPS/IDS technology, which combines passive and active detection with intrusion prevention, to create a single protection model that I believe is more effective than anything our competitors can offer. The three really significant things about it are:

1.    It fits our ‘unified’ approach to security by combining existing technologies on a single platform. It’s always more effective to build an integrated system that is meant to work together, rather than bolting bits together.

2.    It can be configured to whatever specific requirements clients have – even down to individual teams within companies.

3.    We are developing the IPS/IDS technology on existing functionality to make it even more effective, flexible and sophisticated.  It is all part of our service.

This managed approach has to be the way forward as security gets more complex.

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Twitter and security policies

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

Yesterday, we released the latest guide in our ‘securing social media’ series; this time focusing on Twitter. You can download the full Guide to Secure Use of Twitter here.

While I don’t want to overstate the case, there are security risks associated with Twitter. The most significant of these is the willingness of people to click on links sent shared with them by people they don’t really know. Often these links are masked by URL-shortening tools such as tinyurl or bit.ly, which could lead to a site containing malware, or used to launch spam campaigns or phishing attacks.

The main thrust of our advice to businesses is: review your security policy to make sure it includes Twitter. I hope that this guide will be useful in helping IT managers develop user policies and security processes that take new technologies such as Twitter into account.

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Securing social media use

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

We are often asked by companies how to help them block applications (like IM), or control what employees are downloading from social networks (Facebook, MySpace) or microblogs (Twitter). As a result, we’re publishing a series of ‘securing social media’ guides for IT managers to use with their employees, and help keep the use of these applications or networks secure.

The first of these was a guide to secure blogging, which proved extremely popular. We’ve just brought out the second in the series, on securing social networks.

Since we first wrote about advising companies on the security issues of Facebook and other networks, we’ve seen a significant shift in company policy. A year ago, many companies were blocking access to social networks, which were seen as for personal use only. But now, these same companies are using the likes of LinkedIn and Facebook for their own promotion, networking and even customer contact.

I hope that our guide will help IT managers within those companies to update their security and access policies so that employees get the access they need, but without a negative impact on corporate security, productivity and bandwidth; and educate users on the part they play in corporate security.

You can download the guide here.

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