@Risk

Here’s a remarkable statistic: Among the more than 900 electronic records breaches that Verizon Business experts investigated last year, a whopping 96 percent could have been avoided if security basics had been followed.

That’s right. Nearly all of these breaches could have been avoided; only 4 percent of the breaches analyzed required difficult and expensive protective measures. In addition, most victimized organizations (87 percent) had evidence of a breach in their security logs, but overlooked these red flags due to a lack of staff, tools or processes.

The new 2010 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report , which for the first time was prepared in collaboration with the US Secret Service, is filled with other fascinating results, too –all of which offer some important perspective about the vulnerability of business data and the most effective approaches for mitigating cybercrime threats.  For instance, the report also reveals that: (more…)

You check email when you’re on vacation. You bring a company laptop on your trips. Taking “the office” on the road has become so commonplace that these days, we generally don’t think twice about it.

But, a new study from Credant Technologies offers some interesting insights and more than a few words of caution. After all, in some cases, accessing company data from mobile devices can seriously impact corporate security.

Consider these findings. Credant polled 1,000 office workers in London and found that: (more…)

Corporate boards and senior executives are becoming increasingly disconnected from their organizations’ security and privacy decisions, according to new research from Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab.

That’s more than a little disheartening to hear, considering that cyber attacks are increasingly common and increasingly effective. In fact, Symantec now estimates that attacks like these cost businesses an average of $2 million per year. They cause loss to productivity, efficiency, revenue, and customer trust.

CyLab’s new research, which follows up on a 2008 study, included a survey of 66 business execs at the board or senior executive level from Fortune 1000 companies. Based on the data collected, CyLab was able to uncover several disturbing trends. For example: (more…)

How secure is your data network? Are you satisfied that both your business and personal information are adequately protected? Can you ever feel completely satisfied about that?

The latest news about Google’s penchant for data collection underscores just how vulnerable our networks can be.

In case you missed the story, Google is in hot water for mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks.

In a blog post at its website, Google admits that while it was gathering data for use in location-based products like Google Maps for mobile, it inadvertently collected samples of private, non-password-protected information, as well. The data was collected in all the countries where Street View information has been catalogued, including the United States and parts of Europe.

The company says it never used that data in any Google products. Plus, as Google explains it, any information collected was typically only snippets –because the Street View cars gathering the data are “on the move” and use WiFi equipment that automatically changes channels roughly five times a second.

Still, I’m not sure I find that particularly comforting. For me, the questions at the heart of the matter are: How and why was Google collecting the data in the first place? Here’s the company’s response: (more…)

Can you count on your employees to keep confidential corporate information secure?

Probably not, according to the 2010 Trend Micro survey on corporate and small business end users.

The survey, which included 1600 end users in the U.S., U.K, Germany and Japan, found that, in general, employees were much more focused on individual concerns and conveniences than their company’s overall  IT security. For instance: (more…)