Archive for April, 2008

Corporate Communications Officers Tying The Hands Of Information Security and Privacy Pros

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

I’ve been here at the CSI SX conference for the past few days, and I’ve had the great opportunity and pleasure of speaking with a large number of folks while here. I was finally able to meet Ron Woerner in person (nice to meet you Ron!) after communicating with him in the Security Catalyst Community over the past 1+ year.
I love coming to these conferences and just talking with the participants. There is always at least one topic for which I receive enlightenment that I had not considered before. During the past few days I’ve spoken with 4 to 5 people who are responsible for information security, all from highly regulated industries, who all say despite their adequate to even generous information security and privacy budgets, some of their most important information security and privacy efforts are being quashed by their corporate communications offices; those responsible for the messages that are sent to personnel throughout the enterprise.

(more…)

P2P Security Study Released

Monday, April 28th, 2008

The results of an interesting study, “The Ignored Crisis in Data Security: P2P File Sharing,” performed by the Ponoman Institute and sponsored by Tiversa, were recently released on April 21.
Here are a few interesting tidbits from the report…

(more…)

Do We REALLY Need Doctors To Do Consultations Via Email?

Friday, April 25th, 2008

A few months ago I had some lively back-and-forth blog postings with a doctor who used email and instant messaging (IM) a lot in his practice; here, here and here.
Today my good friend Alec forwarded me another interesting news article (thanks Alec!) about the use of email by doctors; “It’s no LOL: Few US doctors answer e-mails from patients.”

(more…)

Smart Business Leaders Support Effective Log Management Practices and Necessary Resources

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

The second article in this month’s IT Compliance in Realtime Journal is, “Smart Business Leaders Support Log Management.”
I wrote this with an audience of information security and privacy personnel, along with IT managers, in mind.
Download the formatted PDF version to get the full content, not to mention a nicer looking document.
Here is the unformatted version…

(more…)

My Information Security and Privacy Convergence Webcast Now Available

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Yesterday the ISSA posted on their website a free webcast I did, “Information Security and Privacy Convergence
Here is the synopsis…

(more…)

Improve Program Change Controls To Reduce Incidents

Monday, April 21st, 2008

Recently in my Norwich MSIA class we were discussing the importance of program change controls, and I wanted to continue the discussion here because as important as it is, it typically does not get the attention it deserves in most organizations.

(more…)

Improve Program Change Controls To Reduce Incidents

Monday, April 21st, 2008

Recently in my Norwich MSIA class we were discussing the importance of program change controls, and I wanted to continue the discussion here because as important as it is, it typically does not get the attention it deserves in most organizations.

(more…)

Revisiting Online Medical Information Storage Houses Points To Consistent Need For *1* Federal Privacy Law

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Last fall I blogged about Microsoft’s HealthVault, “Why Would You Trust Microsoft To Store Your Sensitive Health Information?
It didn’t take long before Google got in on the game.
Today an interesting story ran in the New York Times, “Warning on Storage of Health Records” that also points out the concerns with having huge amounts of health information stored in some mega-multi-services-products types of monolith company. The issues are the same for any organization storing such information, though; but putting health information in the same corporate systems that contain the records of billions of people really open up quite a Pandora’s box of privacy breach possibilities.
Here are some excerpts from the news story that make some good points…

(more…)

Addressing Application Vulnerabilities With PCI DSS Log Management Compliance

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

The third and final paper in my PCI DSS log management compliance series is now available!
I encourage you to download the much nicer-looking formatted PDF version. 🙂
However, the following is the unformatted version of “Addressing Application Vulnerabilities with PCI Log Management Compliance“…

(more…)

Great New Risk Management Document From The U.S. GAO

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

There is a new document from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), “STRENGTHENING THE USE OF RISK MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES IN HOMELAND SECURITY
It includes discussions of current risk management practices from non-government industries that are really quite interesting, not to mention some great risk management ideas and descriptions of risk management practices.
Check it out!