Francis deSouza - Group President, Enterprise Products and Services, Symantec

Earlier this week, Google posted a blog stating that the personal Gmail accounts of numerous users, including senior US government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel, and journalists had been attacked. Google said a campaign to obtain passwords appears to have originated in Jinan, China and was aimed at monitoring the contents of these users' emails, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to change people's forwarding and delegation settings. Google confirmed that it detected and disrupted this campaign and has notified victims and secured their accounts. They have also notified the relevant government authorities.

These attacks appear to be an example of...

My prediction is that we are all going to become nostalgic for the days of fame-seeking mass mailers and network worms. Think of LoveLetter, SQL Slammer, and Melissa all crashing millions of systems within hours of being released into the wild. Those threats seem quite quaint these days as we enter the third significant shift in the threat landscape.

We moved from fame to fortune (which we have dubbed “crimeware”) in the last ten years. Mass mailers were replaced by malware that steals credit card information and sells phony antivirus products. Malware has become a successful criminal business model with billions of dollars in play. The goal became stealth and financial gain at the expense of unsuspecting computer users. And Trojans and toolkits, like Zeus, are the modern tools of the trade.

We have now entered a third stage—one of cyber-espionage and cyber-sabotage. Cyber-espionage did not begin with Stuxnet, and crimeware does not end with it. In...

Following an industry conference, I find it a good practice for me to reflect back on what I learned and observed and see how I can apply it to my current work. At the conference there is so much to learn and take in, so I find it helps to let it all marinate for a bit of time and then I can start to uncover the new learning once I’m back at my desk and away from the conference buzz. It’s now been nearly two weeks since BlackHat wrapped up and these are the topics and observations from the conference that have been swilling around in my head. I hope to explore these thoughts more with my industry colleagues and find my way to contribute to improving security industry best practices.
 
Cyber security professionals need an education

Education remains an area of concern for cyber security professionals. The perception is that universities are graduating computer scientists and other degreed professionals inadequately prepared to...

Despite threats, companies lack policies on social media at work

Nothing has happened to change the mind of IT management in the last several years; social networks remain a major security concern. What has changed is that social media has become more established, and the ability for IT management to block access to social media is less and less likely. According to some survey work we did, there is only a 1 in 20 chance of your company blocking access to social networking sites.

Part of this is no doubt because of the rush by businesses to adopt social networking in their marketing efforts. Companies have started Twitter accounts, created Facebook fan pages, and established a presence in online communities. What’s clear from our survey is that simply having a presence on social networks is good for business. In our survey, 52% of respondents said that a company’s presence on social media positively impacts their opinion of the company. As for keeping...