2008 Security Word of the Year: "Whaling"
I’m always amused by new security terms. Phishing and Pharming are great (although the latter makes me think of medicines), but my current favorite is "whaling" — targeted phishing of high-ranking executives and the like. It’s an interesting target – they tend not to be highly technical, and at the same time, the rewards to [...]
IT Week Editor’s Choice Award!
Thanks to our friends at IT Week for awarding us their Editor’s Choice Award. The current issue can be found here; we’re about halfway down.
Share This
Save $7.2 Billion with PhoneFactor
Jackson Shaw writes an interesting piece about the stunningly large loss over at Société Général last week. It is a pretty amazing story. Jackson’s opinion that a decent two-factor authentication system would have gone some way toward preventing the loss is compelling.
Money quote:
…Mr. Kerviel (the fraudster) used the computer log-in and passwords of colleagues both [...]
Authentication and Insider Threats
I was quoted in a recent article about how two-factor authentication can play a role in managing insider threats. The overall article is about 2008 trends in data security. The author notes that insider threats weren’t really on the radar screens of most IT organizations a year ago, but they’re certainly getting a lot of [...]
Nice NetworkWorld mention
From NetworkWorld:
And there are plenty of innovative two-factor authentication methods out there. For example, Positive Networks uses phones as a way to authenticate users. An end user logging onto their computer triggers a phone call to a designated number. The user then punches in a PIN, which triggers access to the network.
Thanks for the mention, [...]
Authentication survey
Our company is running a survey at the moment about authentication and related issues. The results will help us improve the product and understand customer needs more effectively. So if you have 5 spare minutes, go visit http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=854383 and tell us what you think.
We’re going to summarize the results in a report, and anyone who [...]
PhoneFactor 1.2
Just before the holidays, we released PhoneFactor 1.2 for general availability. PhoneFactor 1.2 includes a number of enhancements, including support for MS-CHAP v2 and a full user self-service portal. The portal should allow large organizations to roll out PhoneFactor more easily, by allowing users to self-enroll for service as well as allowing for things like [...]
