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This Sunday at 2:00 a.m. many of us will be moving our clocks ahead one hour to “spring forward” for daylight savings time. We’ve all heard the suggestion that daylight savings is a good reminder to check your smoke detector or carbon monoxide detector batteries. I’d like to add to that—this is a great time of year to remind yourself to change your passwords for your email, social media, banking accounts and mobile phone.
Also, remember to change the passwords of any application or API that plugs into your credentials, like HootSuite, Tweetdeck or Twitpic.
Here are a few guidelines to get your passwords in the most secure shape:
As soon as I heard about today’s Pew Internet Trust and American Life Project survey that says most people surf the Internet for no particular reason—I immediately thought of our recent research showing that the leisure, or fun side of the web can often be tainted. Searching for breaking trends and current news represented a higher risk (22.4 percent) than searching for objectionable content (21.8 percent). For example, while doing research for our threat report we found that searching for breaking trends and current news represented a higher risk (22.4 percent) than searching for objectionable content (21.8 percent).
Most people get into trouble when they are busy doing something that isn’t useful—internet use included. OK, so what does this mean for you at work? Well, if you didn’t know it already, your new workforce is on the internet A LOT, and they expect to have internet access.
So, you’ve got workers wandering the net and at every moment they are just two clicks away from malware. Makes you stop and think a bit about the security defenses you have in place within your organization, doesn’t it?
The study says, “internet users of all ages are much more likely now than in the past to say they go online for no particular reason other than to pass the time or have fun. Some 58 percent of all adults (or 74 percent of all online adults) say they use the internet this way.”
“Young adults’ use of the internet can at times be simply for the diversion it presents. Indeed, 81 percent of all young adults in this age cohort report they have used the internet for this reason at least occasionally.”
And it’s not just the youngest that are wandering the internet in their spare time (at their lunch, or on a slow Friday, or Monday). More than 65 percent of those 30-49 exhibit the same behavior.
You can’t stop internet access and keep happy employees, but you can keep your organization safe.
Keep up with the latest in threats and threat research at the Websense Security Labs blog.
With all of the crazy 2011 security breaches, exploits and notorious hacks, what can we expect for 2012? Last year’s Websense Security Labs predictions were very accurate, so these predictions should provide very useful guidance for security professionals. Here are the highlights; the full report can be downloaded here.
Read more commentary and watch the video here.
I've been meeting with a lot of customers recently, and two things that keep coming up are concerns about advanced targeted attacks and how to deal with the threats that social media bring into an organization.
Now, social media has been around for quite some time, it’s not new. The new challenge is the surprising rate at which it is evolving and the fact that it is seen now as a freight train that IT can’t stop—and shouldn’t try stopping.
Marketing uses Facebook and Twitter. HR uses LinkedIn. Even customer support is looking at Twitter. And a new generation of workers can’t seem to live without constantly being connected—and expectation they bring to work with them. I’ve even had a CSO come out and say, “Even in a tough job market, my CEO says we need to do everything we can to get the best candidates out there. That means access to social media and the innovations that come with it. Basically they told me to make it happen AND keep us safe.”
We’ve been working on things to keep organizations safe on the social Web for ages, but it helps to check in with the world every now and then to make sure we are on the right track in allowing safe access to social media.
With that in mind, we teamed with the Ponemon Institute to assess the social media readiness and risk profile of more than 4,000 IT and IT security practitioners around the globe, and what we found is a little surprising.
Websense Security Labs has found an alarming number of Facebook scams taking advantage of today’s tragedy in Oslo, Norway. Right now it seems to be infecting one user every second. The scam is a form of ‘clickjacking’ that replicates itself on users’ walls after they click on fake posts within their news feed.
This Facebook scam is unfortunate, but a very real threat. Criminals know how to take advantage of disasters and the hottest news items to get people to click on infected links. Tragedy is just one type of news that the bad guys use to exploit, compromise and infect your computer. Videos are an especially popular lure, we saw the same thing when Osama bin Laden died and during the Casey Anthony was acquitted. During times of crisis or breaking news, your best bet is to stick with the largest news organizations you trust. Avoid the potentially dangerous halls of search engines and social media sites, which are more susceptible to compromise and manipulation.
Users should also be cautious when clicking on breaking news trends and stories within search results related to the Oslo tragedy. Websense Security Labs have found that searching for breaking trends and current news represented a higher risk (22.4%) than searching for objectionable content (21.8%), including pornography.
