Archive for July, 2008

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Supreme Court Justice Breach

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008


 The Washington Post reported that late 2007, an employee of a McLean investment firm decided to trade some music, or maybe a movie, with like-minded users of the online file-sharing network LimeWire while using a company computer. In doing so, he inadvertently opened the private files of his firm, Wagner Resource Group, to the public.

That exposed the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of about 2,000 of the firm’s clients, including a number of high-powered lawyers and Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

The breach was not discovered for nearly six months.This is another demonstration of how common applications can create invisible holes in your firewall and compromise your organization.  PromiSEC’s Spectator could have prevented this by it’s policy manager without even installing any software on the desktop.  After creating a policy of “approved” software programs, Spectator can scan and enforce for “rogue” software, effectively stopping it and even uninstalling it automatically.   It can do this and much much more, for less than $50 per workstation. 

 Learn more here or call us for more information on how to prevent this from happening at your company.

  

 

 

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MailMarshal and Blackberry

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008


The Blackberry Enterprise Server connects your internal email server with your Blackberry users.  However for companies who have hosted mail environments, who cannot afford a BES server, or have users on the Blackberry webclient, there is no central function to control their blackberry population.  There is a solution.  4 years ago, GNSC began using MailMarshal SMTP as a way of managing their internal Blackberries.  With MailMarshal SMTP you can create dynamic policies that allow Blackberry users to receive, send and manage emails on a non-BES platform. 

MailMarshal SMTP can do much more than just stop spam, it can email-enable applications, act as a systems monitor, control key functions in other systems and help assess the “temperature” of your employees attitudes during times of stress.  Contact me today if you would like to run you ideas past us.  We are the MailMarshal SMTP experts.

Posted in Email Security, Misc | No Comments »

USB Embarrasment

Monday, July 7th, 2008


This is the strory of how a $10 USB device impacted the US Navy and embarrassed the Japanese Military. 

Japan’s military has confessed to losing a USB device that contained troop deployment maps for a joint Japan-US military exercise.

In February of last year, a 33-year-old captain of the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) reportedly stole the memory stick along with 2,000 yen in cash and a 10,000 yen airline coupon.

The GSDF previously announced a one month suspension for the apprehended officer for stealing the cash and coupon, but never mentioned the USB drive to the public.

According to Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, the force withheld the information because they didn’t want people on the internet searching for the data.

But the story is not over.  Shortly after that , a lieutenant colonel borrowed the USB device and lent it to a sergeant first class. The sergeant left it on his desk, where it was accidentally tossed.

This is a classic example of how “fragile” USB devices are.  Our recommendation is NOT to use them at your place of business UNLESS you are using some form of Endpoint Security solution such as PromiSec’s Spectator. 

For less than the cost of most high capacity USB drives today, you can secure each endpoint in your company and prevent a repeat of this incident. 

 

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