What are hackers up to these days?

May 23, 2016, 5:56 am

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The long answer is more complex, but security vendor Trustwave offered some insights in its 2016 Trustwave Global Security Report, which was released last month.

"Criminals are getting a lot savvier," says Karl Sigler, Trustwave's threat intelligence manager. "We're seeing their tactics changing a little bit."

New bad news

In the study, Trustwave found that compromises affecting corporate and internal networks hit 40 percent in 2015, up from 18 percent from the year before.

"Criminals are discovering that if they can get themselves embedded into a corporate network, there's a wealth of monetizable data in those networks," says Sigler. This could also be a result of what he calls a "drastic decline" in the rate of point-of-sale breaches, which dropped by 18 percentage points from 2014 to 2015, according to the study. "Criminals don't go away. They just shift targets," he says.

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The dangerous cost of ‘free’ Wi-Fi

July 29, 2016, 6:25 am

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So you go to a political convention. Do a little politicking and listen to some speeches. While taking a break from the handshaking and schmoozing you decide to do a little work on your laptop. Then you get hacked.

During the Republican National Convention, IT security company Avast security set up fake Wi-Fi hotspots to see who would fall for their trick. As it turns out, a lot of people fell for it. Avast estimated more than 1,200 people logged into the fake hotspots, some with politically leaning names like "I VOTE TRUMP! FREE INTERNET," and "I VOTE HILLARY! FREE INTERNET," and some with an official ring to them like "Google Starbucks" and ATTWifi at GOP."

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Why an IT services firm sponsors the New York City Marathon

October 4, 2016, 7:14 am

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In 2013, TCS signed an eight-year deal to be the title sponsor of the New York City Marathon.

It was a blockbuster deal -- and a bit of a surprise. The marathon's previous sponsor had been ING, and major marathons tend to be sponsored by financial services companies: John Hancock has Boston, Bank of America has Chicago, Virgin Money has London.

But TCS? An IT services company? From India?

"It's a little perplexing," says Douglas J. Olberding chair of the department of sports studies at Xavier University.

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How to conquer a CRM monster

December 8, 2016, 4:00 am

≫ Next: Why gifts cards are the new favorite target for fraud

≪ Previous: Why an IT services firm sponsors the New York City Marathon

Richard Bexon has a succinct way to describe the previous CRM software used by the NAMU Travel Group: "a monster."

"We had what I suppose you could call a legacy system here," says Bexon, COO of NAMU, a network of luxury travel agencies. Over the eight years that they used the system, too many people had their fingers into the code, and the monster didn't have a manual in case one of those fingers broke the entire system.

That could be why, when in 2015, NAMU decided to scrap it and instead start using a cloud-basedCRM application from Bpm'online, the results were off the charts: 271 percent ROI, payback in four months and an annual average benefit of $271,767, according to Bexon.

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Why gifts cards are the new favorite target for fraud

May 3, 2017, 9:48 am

≫ Next: Why some people are willing to pay for a mobile app

≪ Previous: How to conquer a CRM monster

If you're like most Americans, you have a few gift cards in your wallet right now. I have two, one has a snowman on it. In 2015, the average holiday shopper purchased two gift cards, and the total volume of gift card value is expected to reach $160 billion by 2018, according to Gift Card Granny.

Despite being great presents for many, prepaid gift cards can be a bullseye for fraud and money laundering. With tighter post-financial crisis regulation on larger amounts of money, and safer chip-enabled debit and credit cards, fraud has "shifted to the less valuable avenues -- or at least previously less valuable," says Stephen Ufford, CEO of Trulioo. "Any thinking person would ask where do I go next? One door closes, another opens. It's trickled down."

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Why some people are willing to pay for a mobile app

May 8, 2017, 11:34 am

≫ Next: Mobile device management has become alphabet soup

≪ Previous: Why gifts cards are the new favorite target for fraud

Who pays for apps? Who doesn't when they should? And who is most likely to make in-app purchases on the fly?

To help app developers build a strategy, we asked two experts about mobile app purchasing behavior: John B. Dinsmore, assistant professor of marketing at the Raj Soin College of Business at Wright State University and lead author of "To 'Free' or Not to 'Free': Trait Predictors of Mobile App Purchasing Tendencies and Joe Silverman, CEO of New York Computer Help.

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Mobile device management has become alphabet soup

October 1, 2015, 5:39 pm

≫ Next: Should CIOs worry about the Internet of Hackable Things?

≪ Previous: Why some people are willing to pay for a mobile app

Get a job and a company-issued cellphone and computer in exchange? Stop living in the past, man. Companies don’t necessarily operate this way anymore, especially as our work and personal lives become more and more intertwined.

But BYOD isn't the only acronym in the game, especially since employees are pushing back. According to a recent survey conducted by Bitglass, 57 percent of employees – and 38 percent of IT professionals – do not participate in their company's BYOD program because they don't want employers to have visibility into their personal data and applications.

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Should CIOs worry about the Internet of Hackable Things?

February 16, 2016, 3:43 am

≫ Next: How long does it take to build a custom app?

≪ Previous: Mobile device management has become alphabet soup

If 2015 was the year of the Internet of Things, 2016 could be the year of the hacked Internet of Things. That could mean a lot of headaches for CIOs, whether they're fans of these new devices themselves or will be dealing with employees connecting them at work and managing the potential security exposure that brings.

"The issue to date is that devices are vulnerable just by the fact that they exist and can connect to the Internet," says Jerry Irvine, member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Cybersecurity Leadership Council and CIO of Prescient Solutions. "Anybody can get to a device if you don't secure them properly."

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How long does it take to build a custom app?

February 22, 2016, 3:59 am

≫ Next: How to avoid common travel and vacation scams

≪ Previous: Should CIOs worry about the Internet of Hackable Things?

Your company wants a custom app for that?

It's possible – and not just if you're the CIO of a big bucks corporation. New advances in app-building technology have lowered the cost of making apps, and the time and knowledge to make, test and deploy them, too.

Much like how the power of website building used to be in the hands of only those who knew HTML but can now be built by anyone with a Squarespace or Wordpress account, new programs are letting non-developer employees to make apps with ease.

"I couldn't write a line of code to save my life, but I can configure an app," says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research, enterprise applications, with Nucleus Research. App development can be a drag and drop process, which enables a business user to make the app themselves.

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How to avoid common travel and vacation scams

February 29, 2016, 3:50 am

≫ Next: People are (still) the biggest security risks

≪ Previous: How long does it take to build a custom app?

As usual, winter's been bleak. You're ready to go ... anywhere else. Somewhere warmer, brighter, more fun.

And someone else is there waiting and ready to steal your information — and your money — in the process.

Travel scams are ripe and ripening as the days grow longer, in some high and very low tech ways.

"The really staggering message that came through in 2015 was that it was the year attackers spent a lot less time and energy on really sophisticated technology intrusions and instead spent the year exploiting us," says Kevin Epstein, vice president of the Threat Operations Center at Proofpoint.

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People are (still) the biggest security risks

March 25, 2016, 4:52 am

≫ Next: Has telecommuting finally become mainstream?

≪ Previous: How to avoid common travel and vacation scams

"We're battling thousands of years of evolution," says Kevin Epstein, vice president of the Threat Operations Center at Proofpoint. "It's natural to be curious about things. Unfortunately, with email scams, it's better to think before you click."

One more reason we – the collective “we,” that is – continue clicking on malicious links or downloading bogus attachments, despite being told not to: hackers have gotten much better at pretending to be someone they're not, using social engineering to slip past our guard by masquerading as someone else.

It's worked, too. An employees at Seagate was recently the victim of an email phishing scam that lead to the release of W-2s of past and current employees, W-2s that include Social Security numbers and salaries among other personal information. An employee at Snapchat was also just phished into sending out payroll information into the wrong hands.

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Has telecommuting finally become mainstream?

April 4, 2016, 4:38 am

≫ Next: Are IT executives blind to cybersecurity threats?

≪ Previous: People are (still) the biggest security risks

Work from home? Flex time? Cube farm? What's work look like in your workplace – if you have a workplace at all?

Allowing employees to work from home part or full-time continues apace.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2014 on days worked, 23 percent of employee persons did some or all of their work from home while 85 percent did some or all of their work at the workplace.

This is only a slight uptick from 2003, the first year these measures were taken. But it is progress. Then, 19 percent of employed persons did some or all of their work at home while 87 percent did some or all of their work at their workplace on days worked. But the relatively consistency of the numbers show that, for a good portion of the workplace population, telecommuting has become an integral part of the work-live balance.

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Are IT executives blind to cybersecurity threats?

April 11, 2016, 4:00 am

≫ Next: 4 tech nightmares keeping IT leaders up at night

≪ Previous: Has telecommuting finally become mainstream?

Is your company’s cybersecurity keeping you up at night?

If you're an IT professional, the answer to that question is probably yes. If you're an IT executive, the answer to that question might be no – even if you work at the same company.

What we're seeing, says Jack Danahy, co-founder of Barkly, a Boston-based endpoint security startup company, "is a breakdown in communication."

That's what Barkly found in its "Cybersecurity Confidence Report." In it, Barkly surveyed of 350 IT professionals and found that 50 percent are not confident in their current security products or solutions.

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4 tech nightmares keeping IT leaders up at night

April 25, 2016, 4:01 am

≫ Next: Can UC keep remote workers engaged?

≪ Previous: Are IT executives blind to cybersecurity threats?

Being a CIO isn't an easy job, not when hackers are coming at you from all sides trying to get their hands on that sweet, sweet data. It’s especially never-racking because one breach can turn a company from a respectable business to one that looks like it protects its information with a layer of Swiss cheese.

Here are four things keeping CIOs up at night – and ways to help them fall back asleep again – or at least into a light doze instead of staring at the ceiling waiting for a hacker to break through.

1. Dude, where's my data?

Andrew Hay, CISO for DataGravity, says one concern might seem a simple one: "the lack of data awareness that organizations have in terms of where information is stored and what type of sensitive information is accessible by people who shouldn't have it," he says.

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Can UC keep remote workers engaged?

May 9, 2016, 3:50 am

≫ Next: What are hackers up to these days?

≪ Previous: 4 tech nightmares keeping IT leaders up at night

So you have a dispersed workforce. Maybe you're part of a big company with several offices. Or maybe your employer has a liberal work-from-home policy. Or perhaps you work with key contractors who may not always be in your office.

Whatever the reason, you need unified communication (UC) technology. And so do a lot of other companies. But a recent study by IT consultancy Softchoice suggests that not many companies are getting the tools they need.

Softchoice surveyed 250 IT managers and 750 line-of-business professionals in North America, and 44 percent of the IT managers polled said that they found it difficult to deploy UC technology.

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What are hackers up to these days?

May 23, 2016, 5:56 am

≫ Next: The dangerous cost of ‘free’ Wi-Fi

≪ Previous: Can UC keep remote workers engaged?

The long answer is more complex, but security vendor Trustwave offered some insights in its 2016 Trustwave Global Security Report, which was released last month.

"Criminals are getting a lot savvier," says Karl Sigler, Trustwave's threat intelligence manager. "We're seeing their tactics changing a little bit."

New bad news

In the study, Trustwave found that compromises affecting corporate and internal networks hit 40 percent in 2015, up from 18 percent from the year before.

To read this article in full, please click here

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