Security Industry — Opinions

Pervasive technologies and its implication on security

All of us are, to some extent, slaves to technology. Judicious use of technology is mandated. Human kind has, so far, been naïve in adopting technology with the presumption that it will always be used in the right spirit, but we have seen it being used in the wrong context over and over again. This article is about the implications of malicious use of pervasive technology.

Shantanu Bhattacharya | 13 Nov | Read more

How Can Organisations Deal Intelligently with Information Security Breaches?

Data breaches are happening more frequently, compromising larger volumes of data than ever before. We seem to hear about new data breaches every day. The number of compromised records grows, while organisations are subjected to larger financial penalties, stronger legislative and regulatory scrutiny, and tangible reputational damage. For organisations that suffer a breach, responding in an intelligent and confident manner is critical.

Steve Durbin | 13 Nov | Read more

Smart Cities deliver Innovation & Security

Smart city projects are among the most exciting technological initiatives around today and will play a major role in the world’s future growth and security. Modern technology lets us track and monitor many elements in a major urban environment – noise, light, traffic, weather, accidents and incidents, and use this data to improve people’s living and working conditions.

Gordon Makryllos | 24 Oct | Read more

Incident Response Plan

Do you take a fatalistic approach to cyber attack? ‘Whatever will be, will be’ is an attitude in life (and movies) that is well suited to events that evoke a spontaneous response—like who will you marry? These are the questions posed in Doris Day’s song from the Hitchcock movie ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’. They’re not appropriate for incidents which inspire fear, which Doris learns when her son is kidnapped.

Dr Claudia Johnson | 23 Oct | Read more

Dispelling Common Myths Surrounding UTM

Unified Threat Management (UTM) has become popular among organisations since its emergence over five years ago. The security solution gained traction with its all-in-one approach, combining several security tools into a single device. Running UTM also saved companies, especially the smaller ones time, money and manpower. Most UTM today include a firewall, intrusion detection system (IDS), virtual private network (VPN), anti-malware, anti-spam, content and web filtering, while some vendors include other features such as advanced routing.

Wana Tun | 03 Oct | Read more

Navigating the balancing act: how to support user privacy whilst maintaining control of corporate-owned data

It goes without saying that government surveillance news dominates our media. From a global standpoint, the NSA leaks brought international attention to state organised spying. Locally, the Australian Government has been making headlines over its plans to develop legislation that will allow it to more easily access metadata from large organisations and telecoms providers to gain information on the consumers using their services in a bid to prevent acts of terrorism

David Balazsy | 03 Oct | Read more

Cyber crime in financial institutions

What is cyber crime? There are a number of different ways that criminals are trying to target financial institutions. There is social engineering exploits, which is when an end-user gets an email claiming to be from their bank, but it’s really a cyber criminal. Within that email there is a link asking the end-user to confirm their account information. Cyber criminals then leverage the credentials to gain access to the user’s financial records and banking accounts. Malware is another piece to it, where criminals distribute malicious software and a user is tricked into installing a keylogger or screen scraper program on their device. This means that when an end-user enters their credentials, the program can capture all that information, allowing criminals to gain access to the account.

Crispin Kerr | 03 Oct | Read more

Opinion: Fighting the botnet threat



ISPs in Australia have for some time been notifying users about the likelihood that their computers have been compromised by malware. Now under the icode, the system has been formalised. Education and remediation tools are being made available to suspected victims.

Peter Coroneos | 22 Jul | Read more

Opinion: Cyber-Security – Stay Smart Online

Australians are increasingly relying on the internet in their everyday lives, from banking and shopping, through to using emails, social networking and blogs to keep in touch with family and friends. They are using a range of devices such as smart phones, tablets, computer game consoles and other devices to go online.

Sabeena Oberoi | 15 Jul | Read more

Opinion: How safe is your customer identity data?

Some of the world’s largest corporations have recently fallen victim to hacking attacks and identify data theft, while other online businesses have been compromised and sidelined for days or weeks, losing millions of dollars in revenue and suffering significant reputational damage. It’s never been more important for companies to act in order to avoid becoming the next victim of identity data theft.

Anton Koren | 14 Jul | Read more

Opinion: Drazen Drazic ~ Securus Global talks to CSO about Internet Security

If we were to believe the marketing hype over the last 20 years, we should be in a position today, in 2011 where security is not the BIG problem that it is. Every “security” product has promised to take the pain away; make us secure, compliant (with every known standard), and to not only solve our problem today, but to future proof us also. Buy now and you need nothing else!

Drazen Drazic | 08 Jul | Read more