Stories by Mary Brandel

Database security: At rest, but not at risk

Database security is starting to show up on the radar of C-level execs, and no wonder. According to Verizon's "2012 Data Breach Investigations Report," 174 million corporate records were compromised in 2011 (the highest since 2004, according to the company), and in a survey by the Independent Oracle Users Group, 31 percent of respondents anticipated a major data breach this year.

Mary Brandel | 30 Jul | Read more

How to fight check fraud

Thanks to increasingly sophisticated technology and ongoing economic uncertainty, all types of fraud are flourishing today, including check fraud. The prevalence of mobile and wireless technologies and the increasing ease of access to high-quality printing and duplication technology are making it easier for criminals to steal credentials, alter check numbers and create counterfeit checks.

Mary Brandel | 03 Apr | Read more

APT in action: The Heartland breach

In late 2008, a group of hackers succesfully broke into the network of Princeton, N.J.-based payment processing giant Heartland Payment Systems. The hackers stole data from more than 100 million credit and debit cards on the company's network that serves the card-processing needs of restaurants, retailers and other merchants.

Mary Brandel | 13 Mar | Read more

Moving day: How to protect your company during a relocation

In its 16 years of business, DataServ Solutions has relocated five times. That makes David Berndt, CIO at the document-digitization and process-automation company in St. Louis, Mo., something of an expert on the topic of securing corporate moves. "By now, we've got a good process," he says. In the most recent move this past February, nothing was lost or damaged. "We shut down the office at about 2:30 on Friday, and we were up 100 percent on Monday, with no disruption for our clients and no service levels missed."

Mary Brandel | 09 Sep | Read more

Cloud security: The basics

Cloud computing is one of the most-discussed topics among IT professionals today. And not too long into any conversation about the most highly touted cloud models--software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS)--the talk often turns to cloud security.

Mary Brandel | 16 Jun | Read more

Biometrics: What, Where and Why

Biometrics encompasses a variety of methods for ensuring identity based on physical or behavioral traits. Conventional identifying traits include fingerprints, face topology, iris structure, hand geometry, vein structure, voice, signature and keystroke recognition. Emerging technologies analyze characteristics such as gait, odor, and ear shape. Rather than being used in isolation, biometrics systems are increasingly becoming multimodal, an approach that serves both to increase security and overcome failure-to-enroll problems.

Mary Brandel | 25 Mar | Read more

Web App Firewalls: How to Evaluate, Buy, Implement

A Web application firewall (WAF) is designed to protect Web applications against common attacks such as <a href="http://blogs.csoonline.com/xss_the_spark_to_the_ajax_dynamite">cross-site scripting</a> and <a href="http://blogs.csoonline.com/sans_warns_of_mass_sql_injection_attacks">SQL injection</a>. Whereas network firewalls defend the perimeter of the network, WAFs sit between the Web client and Web server, analyzing application-layer traffic for violations in the programmed security policy, says Michael Cobb, founder of Cobweb Applications, a security consultancy.

Mary Brandel | 11 Jun | Read more

How to Manage Surveillance Video

Video management software (VMS) allows you to record and view live video from multiple surveillance cameras--either IP-based or analog cameras with an encoder--monitor alarms, control cameras and retrieve recordings from an archive. Because they are IP-based, VMS systems are more expandable and flexible than DVR-based systems, and employees can control the software from anywhere on the network. Surveillance and security teams can use the software for live monitoring, as well as investigative and forensic purposes, using archived footage.

Mary Brandel | 14 May | Read more