USB Encryption

In a recent survey done by ICM Research, it was discovered that only 12% of consumers interviewed truly believed that companies are doing enough to protect their personal data. ICM questioned 4,000 consumers in Germany, the UK and France.

The results of the survey show that consumers have a very strong distrust of many businesses and their handling of personal data. What should be upsetting to most of these European companies is that 76% of those surveyed said they would “likely” no longer use or leave a business or service provider if it leaked any of their information.

This comes on the heels of moves by the European Commission to required mandatory data breach disclosures. Companies will be required to put preventive measures in place to prevent data leaks. Many UK firms aren’t ready it appears after it was reported that only 1 in 10 British companies thought they were ready for the new European data protection directive.

However, those surveyed also revealed a more complicated view of the data protection relationship. For example, consumers in the ICM survey continued to put expenses or costs at a higher concern than whether a company has the proper data security procedures in place. 64% surveyed were concerned about higher costs over 30% concerned about data protection.

Meanwhile, the research showed that while consumers are concerned about breaches, the majority only read through key parts of security clauses (36%) and a mere 19% read through all the security information provided. In addition, 13% do not read any security information at all. Using mission critical usb encryption is a way for businesses to protect data.

Quentyn Taylor, director of information security at Canon Europe, which sponsored the survey, said: “If the planned EC reforms go ahead and mandatory breach disclosure is enforced we may see a greater increase in the number of data breaches reported, but there is a risk that consumers could start to become indifferent to what constitutes a serious breach.”
Taylor said: “In effect the numbers of breach disclosure events could cause ‘disclosure fatigue’ which is as serious as no disclosure at all. The onus is on organizations to carry out risk assessments to highlight all potential vulnerabilities.”

Oliver David writes articles for publications on issues like all-important usb protection, very secure flash drives, and hardware authentication

In a new survey, 70% of organizations storing third-party data are not “very confident” that the sensitive data stored within their organization is protected. Over 80% of the organizations that responded to the survey were actually storing sensitive data from their customers, clients, vendors and business partners. About 50% were ?fairly confident? that the information was protected. About 20% were “not confident at all” that sensitive data was protected. And 5% were “unsure.”

It’s disconcerting that so many companies are still complacent when it comes to data protection. It means that these organizations would have some serious questions to answer should they suffer a breach. In fact, regulators such as the SEC, ICO and EU would likely deem that they had failed in their obligation to provide appropriate security protection to prevent sensitive data breaches and impose a hefty financial penalty.

Further information gathered by the survey included more insight into those who identified as “not confident” that data was protected — only 10% did not know where the data is stored and 0% did not monitor all data access. These additional data points make it clear that the lack of confidence in protection likely stems from the ever-changing abilities for cyber thieves to find ways to access and steal data.

The Ponemon Institute’s Cost of Data Breach Study – which focuses exclusively on U.S. data breaches, also has shown that the cost of data breaches has been on the decline as more efforts are put into reaction and response. The most significant being that both the organizational cost of data breach and the cost per lost or stolen record have declined. The organizational cost has declined from $7.2 million to $5.5 million and the cost per record has declined from $214 to $194.

The survey states, “This decline suggests that organizations represented in this study have improved their performance in both preparing for and responding to a data breach”. However, it seems that as data breaches continue to occur and the efforts of data hackers improves, businesses feel as though they never are prepared and begin to lack the confidence that they can control and protect data security. Having secure usb flash drive review will add some confidence when selecting such devices, products and vendors for a company’s data protection needs.

Oliver David writes articles for publications on topics like usb protection and usb encryption.

Web connected TVs and set-top boxes are only a small percentage of the hundreds of millions of American households. A new report from the research firm, NPD In-Stat is predicting that 100 million homes in both North America and Europe will own a television that has Internet content capabilities by 2016. At this point, there are limited concerns about information security with regard to these connected TVS – like those in the Roku or Apple Tv networks. However, recent revelations are raising fears that these connected TVs will be a new security hole.

Roger Grimes, a blogger has written about his exploits working as a security advisor for an unnamed CATV service provider. Grimes wrote in InfoWorld about his work as part of a team that was tasked with penetrating the CATV’s network. The team was able to bypass the security features of the CATV provider’s set top box, redirecting the service’s Disney channel to a porn site. These shenanigans were on top of the team’s ability to access the CATV provider’s web servers.

“Our goal was to see if we could hack into the set-top box, steal customer personal information, pirate services, and incur denial-of-service conditions.” Roger Grimes wrote in a recent article. Adding, “we not only owned the box, but ended up taking root of the entire cable system.”

The future of Web-connected Tv is going to be just like today’s world. There is a potential that the world may see malware takeovers of TVs, DoS attacks, and all the other hacker related activity that is seen in current computer networks in the always-connected world. Perhaps things like usb encryption and other forms of encryption will help.

Most likely the world will see hackers do the following with Internet connected TVs:
– Present fake credit card forms to fool consumers into giving up their private information.
– Intercept and redirect Internet traffic to and from the HDTV, which could be used fool consumers into thinking that “imposter” banking and commerce websites were legitimate.
– Monitor and report on consumers? private Internet usage habits without their knowledge.

Oliver David writes articles for publications on topics like flash drive reviews and secure flash drives.

A current survey demonstrated that a majority of organizations as well as government organizations are blind towards the reality that they’ve an issue with their information protection. These organizations are at an excellent danger and do not even understand it.
Also, the businesses might be unaware that they’ve currently lost information or had the private info stolen from their databases or computer systems by cyber thieves. This blindness implies that they’re unaware that they’ve lost useful info or that the operations happen to be compromised by some means.

Listed here are some suggestions to help keep your information secure as well as your reputation sterling:
1. Keep in mind that certainly one of the worst errors would be to believe that it’s the responsibility from the IT division to safeguard consumer and sensitive information. Security ought to have the focus of C-level management and it ought to be a component from the general corporate technique with each an outside and much more importantly internal threat.
2. It’s suggested from sources on-line which you manage the core operations and make particular which ones are priorities for the organization. Then defend these operations via layering of protection. Monitor the flow of company interactions to be able to know exactly where the weak intersections and exactly where vulnerabilities are. Use usb encryption and other technologies.
3. Leading management of every organization ought to chair a cross-functional security compliance committee. The committee ought to manage figuring out what the essential info assets are that have to be protected and what the right mixture of external and internal protections are and placing them into location.

Governments, organizations and businesses can take a powerful stance in securing information after which utilizing this to bolster their reputation and trust from the public. Taking the additional actions beyond complying with regulations, organizations which do greater than the minimum to shield information and info will offer a increase in protection of information. A business can turn a powerful corporate objective to secure and shield private info into a increase to corporate reputation and branding.

Oliver David contributes articles for blogs on subjects like usb flash drive review and usb protection.

China has published a draft for new recommendations on personal data protection. The document ?Personal Information Protection Guidelines for Public and Commercial Service Information Systems? was developed by a panel of experts and submitted for evaluation before becoming a national regular for the country.

The China Software Testing Center, a government institution that’s affiliated with the Ministry of Business and Info Technology (MIIT) coordinated the efforts to draft the guidelines and release them for review. The document involved greater than 30 numerous government agencies, organizations and commercial entities.

Using the release from the draft recommendations, Ouyang Wu, Deputy Director General for Information Security at MIIT, explained that the present scenario for individual information protection in China is “very concerning”. Criminal organizations happen to be exploiting the data they obtain from government and commercial databases for individual acquire. China, like other countries has had a spate of high profile data breaches previously year. This has raised public concern and awareness from the problem.

The draft guidelines provide procedures for the gathering, processing, transmitting and destruction of personal data. Ouyang states that organizations following the recommendations will require to follow eight principles: a clear objective for data collection, collect the minimum quantity of individual data possible, prior notification of the collection to the individual, user consent for collection, powerful security, trust and finally, accountability. When the use of a secure flash drive then often times data protection and personal protection are afforded in China.

The guidelines are not mandatory. Currently, you will find greater than 200 laws and regulations, which touch upon the area of individual information protection. However, there isn’t any complete legal framework governing this area.

In 2009, the revised penal code added a new category of crimes on “selling or illegally provisioning of citizens” individual information. However, the articles don’t define what would qualify as criminal activities in this category.

Oliver David contributes articles on subjects like usb encryption and usb protection.

There have been concerns over privacy of personal data ever since the internet became more ubiquitous for personal and professional use. These concerns have been on the rise as more high profile data breaches are discovered and reported. As well, companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter battle with governments over data privacy, the time to be concerned seems to be here and now.

Google recently upgraded and began to implement its new privacy policy. This took place despite strong opposition from the European Union and French authorities. The new privacy policy give Google the right to consolidate what it knows about users across all of its services (Google+, YouTube, Picassa, etc), something it had never done before. Google argues that this new policy will provide a “simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”

These popular online sites aren’t the only digital companies that are under scrutiny for their privacy policies and use of customer data. This spring, it was discovered that Path and Hipster (mobile apps) had been uploading user address books to their servers. Also, Apple and Android phones were also found to be providing access to an owner?s photos, even without permission from the user/owner.

The question has to be raised both in the U.S. and Europe about who actually owns the data. Is it the user and should be safeguarded by the service, to be removed upon an account cancellation. Or is this data that of the application/company to be monetized and used in ways that put individuals at risk for privacy invasions and data theft. Utilizing usb protection is a great way to protect privacy.

Recently it was announced that many advertising networks and leading Internet companies such as AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo had agreed to implement the Do not Track feature: essentially, it stops websites (and advertising networks) from tracking users. This blocks certain practices used by advertisers, such as personalized advertising.

This move was in line with a White House call for a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights”. The whitepaper suggest that user’s online data should have the same set of protections that they should have offline. Fundamentally, the US approach calls for Internet companies and industries to voluntarily adopt regulations with enforcement by a regulatory agency. This hasn’t been implemented but it is clear that steps are finally being made to give online data the privacy protections needed in an ever-increasing digital world.

As technology increases with mobile phones, tablets, skype and other means to stay in touch with the office while working remotely, the likelihood of a data breach whether digital or paper is also going to increase. This popular option of working from home, a coffee shop or in a hotel has increased dramatically in the past 10 years.

Every enterprise should consider what steps they should take to secure data before issuing mobile devices and allowing employees to work from a distance. Data thieves have also seen this increase in mobile work and are targeting sloppy remote access networks in order to gain entry into a system to find valuable data. Below are some tips for ways a business can secure remote access networks.

1. Use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). VPNs provide secure remote access to a company’s internal IT network for remote employees almost as if they were directly accessing it from the office. VPNs give the user a way to work remotely without the need to modify any existing IT systems. The risks are that the physical security systems are not in place with remote access. There are no longer any firewalls, etc. This may allow a system to be fooled into believing a hacker is an employee and give that person access.

2. Limit Access. Because of the limits of VPNs, limiting access to data by remote workers will provide a level of security that may not be achieved if the network is free and open to all telecommuters. Look at each task of telecommuting workers and determine whether or not they need remote access to your IT network. If they only need to access email, perhaps there is a work around that limits the access and thereby provides security.

3. Use SSL Encryption. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption is a great way to ensure that the data is protected during online transactions. Any remote employee could be accessing the company?s data from locations that don?t provide complete security (e.g., a coffee shop). For fuller protection of your data it is important to implement a SSL certificate for remote employees.

4. Require Strong Passwords. So many studies have shown that employees tend to use passwords that very easy to decipher and decode. The examples of passwords like “1234″ or “password” are already recorded in the data breach history books. Knowing this makes it imperative that employees use strong effective passwords. They also must keep the passwords restricted and safe from prying eyes. Having a password expiration data is also an effective way to keep data secure while being accessed remotely.

Having a secure flash drive is important too.

Oliver David writes articles for Data Security Weekly and other publications on topics like usb flash drive review and usb encryption.