Leon Erlanger is a freelance writer, consultant, and former PC Magazine Executive Editor who has spent the past eight years writing about security, storage, and unified communications for InfoWorld, Smart Enterprise, PC Magazine, and many other online and print publications. Leon lives in New York City with his wife and twin daughters.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media platforms are invaluable tools for 21st century enterprise collaboration and marketing, but they introduce multiple security hazards that organizations struggle to address. Dangers include confidential data leakage, reputational damage, social engineering opportunities for hackers, malware, and lawsuits stemming from inappropriate use by employees who see social media as Read more…
Tags: best practices, social media
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has updated its Computer Security Incident Handling Guide to take into account the increasingly dire state of cyber security. As anyone who has followed the rush of high-profile incursions over the past year knows, it’s looking less and less possible to prevent the inevitable attack, no matter Read more…
Tags: Incident Response, NIST
It’s a sobering experience to read the Security and Defense Agenda’s (SDA) just-released report, Cybersecurity: The Vexed Question of Global Rules. The report, sponsored by McAfee, culls together interviews with 80 cyber-security experts in government, business, international organizations, and academia with a survey of 250 senior security practitioners, to get a handle on the cybersecurity Read more…
Tags: cybersecurity, Global Cybersecurity, Security and Defense Agenda
For anyone who has spent the past 10 years thinking IT security is all about operating systems, software, and the Internet, it’s a little shocking to read McAfee’s IT Security predictions for 2012. McAfee doesn’t spend a lot of text discussing new threats to the usual suspects. Instead, it zooms into the next frontier, where Read more…
As soon as you contract with a cloud provider, you should be concerned not only with your IT security but the provider’s as well. If you’re a small or medium-sized business you may assume the provider’s security is superior to your own, and you might be right, but make sure you ask the right questions Read more…
Tags: cloud security
Holiday season is like any other time of year for IT security except moreso. Users shop, hunt for bargains, book travel, and check and manipulate their bank accounts a lot more than they do the rest of the year. They’re also often stressed and strapped for cash, so they’re more susceptible to phishing, fake promotions Read more…
Tags: #SecChat, 12 Scams of Christmas, cyber security awareness
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Disclosure Guidance on Cybersecurity, issued on October 13, is another big step towards the widespread realization that for many organizations, IT and the business are one. More and more critical business processes are dependent on hardware and software and today a company’s worth is just as likely to be based Read more…
Tags: enterprise security, SEC Guidance
Cloud security is a huge, ever evolving subject that is difficult to cover in a short space, especially with so many different cloud service types and architectures (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, external, internal, and hybrid). However, there are a few cloud security practices that just about any organization should apply when working with the cloud. Don’t Read more…
Tags: best practices, cloud security
Smartphones have done wonderful things for employee mobility, but they have also complicated the security picture at organizations large and small. Where most companies used to limit smartphone use to one platform, such as Research In Motion’s Blackberry, most now cope with multiple smartphone models, platforms, and operating systems, each with its own quirks and Read more…
Tags: best practices, consumerization of IT, enterprise mobility, mobiles security, smartphone security
What is the biggest threat to your company’s network? Look in the mirror. A huge percentage of recent high profile attacks, including those perpetrated on Epsilon, RSA, the Oak Ridge Laboratories in Tennessee, and the Gmail accounts of government officials—not to mention Operation SHADY Rat—are suspected to be based on spearphishing, a devious social engineering Read more…
Tags: Shady RAT, Spearphishing
Posts by Leon Erlanger