Tech Alert Briefing for 5/11/2007

May 11, 2007
Update covering May 4 - May 10, 2007

Welcome to Tech Talk! In this week's edition of Tech Talk, BOL Guru Jeff Patterson writes about a new "death threat" internet scam..


Jeff Patterson,
BOL GURUYou'll also learn about:

• Forecasts of an impending internet security battle;
• Growing worries about portable storage devices;
• Yet another revelation from the TJX breach;
• A hidden cost of ID theft;
• Last Tuesday's Microsoft updates; and
• US-CERT's latest list of security vulnerabilities.

Get the details below.

Free Webinar Series ? Best Practices
Join Harland Financial Solutions for a series of complimentary Webinars focusing on industry trends and best practices. Designed for financial institution executives, you can choose from topics such as Deposit Pricing, Event Detection and Delivery, the latest Deposit Benchmarking research findings, and much more. Click here to view the complete schedule or to register.

Gartner's "FFIEC Guidance Drives Online U.S. Banking Security Upgrades" report finds that "two-thirds of 50 U.S. banks surveyed met the year-end 2006 deadline."

The Gartner report, made available by SecureWorks, includes financial institution security spending, what solutions were implemented, status on implementations across the industry and numbers of breaches and disclosures. Click here to view the report.
Warning: Ignore that Death Threat
A new scam is circulating across the internet.The "419 death threat" scam email starts by claiming that the mailer has been paid to assassinate the recipient.The victim is given a limited amount of time to respond.The experts all agree - Don't respond to this scam.

Is a Cyber Security Battle Looming?
Are cyber thieves making more money than drug dealers?According to PC Tool's Malware Research Center, the answer is yes.Citing trends such as blended attacks, "toxic" root kits, and an increase in crime-based threats, the company believes the world is facing one of the most significant internet security battles ever.Read the full story on vnunet.com.

Hanging by their Thumb Drives?
Portable storage devices such as thumb drives have replaced malware as a top security concern according to a recent study.InformationWeek reports that 38.4 percent of IT managers say these portable devices are their top concern.

TJX - Wireless Weakness Woes
Weak wireless security appears to have been the culprit in the compromise of 45 million customer records at TJX Companies, Inc.New information reveals that the cyber criminals broke into the company's records through a wireless network using WEP security.Stolen data includes unencrypted transaction data sent to financial institutions.Find out more at Silicon.com.InformationWeek has a follow up article discussing how cyber criminals are becoming more proficient at invading business networks.It is necessary to control not only access to the IT environment, but also users' movements inside the network.

Fear of ID Theft Costs Banks Billions
Fear of identity theft is still playing a major role in consumer adoption of online banking according to Bank Systems & Technology.The financial industry could increase profitability by $8.3 billion per year if it took significant steps to build consumer confidence in online banking.

Microsoft's May Update
Microsoft's May security update includes 7 updates for 19 security vulnerabilities.Patches include fixes for the Windows DNS Server flaw, multiple Office vulnerabilities and several Internet Explorer holes.

US-CERT's Weekly Weakness List
The US-CERT Vulnerability Summary for the Week of April 30, 2007 lists fifty-two High, sixteen Medium and forty-eight Low severity vulnerabilities. Weaknesses were announced in Apple Mac OS X, Cisco PIX and Adaptive Security Appliance, EMC RSA Security SiteKey, IBM WebSphere Application Server, Microsoft Windows products and Microsoft's Atlas framework, Sun Java, multiple Symantec products, and the Linux kernel.


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