Posts Tagged ‘policies and procedures’

Business Info Fact of the Day: PII Increasingly Stored On MP3 Players

Monday, January 26th, 2009

Over the past few months during some of my presentations I’ve discussed how easily PII can be stored on mobile storage devices that most business leaders and information security folks often do not think about or overlook. One of those devices is the innocent-looking and seemingly benign MP3 player, such as the cool ipod. You gotta love’em! I know I love mine. However, a couple of times when I talked about how easy it is to store large amounts of company data, including personally identifiable information (PII), onto MP3 players, I got some noticeable snickers and sneers from a few in the audience who apparently thought such an idea was preposterous!
Well, here are a couple of different news articles that demonstrates otherwise; both about the same incident, but each with slightly different information…

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Business Info Fact of the Day: PII Increasingly Stored On MP3 Players

Monday, January 26th, 2009

Over the past few months during some of my presentations I’ve discussed how easily PII can be stored on mobile storage devices that most business leaders and information security folks often do not think about or overlook. One of those devices is the innocent-looking and seemingly benign MP3 player, such as the cool ipod. You gotta love’em! I know I love mine. However, a couple of times when I talked about how easy it is to store large amounts of company data, including personally identifiable information (PII), onto MP3 players, I got some noticeable snickers and sneers from a few in the audience who apparently thought such an idea was preposterous!
Well, here are a couple of different news articles that demonstrates otherwise; both about the same incident, but each with slightly different information…

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More Ideas For Data Privacy Day, Jan. 28!

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

I recently blogged about the upcoming international Data Privacy Day on January 28 here.
You and/or your organization can get involved in a number of ways, even at this relatively late date. Here are a few more ideas for you to consider…

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Business Info Fact Of The Day: Smartphones CAN Be Used Securely!

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

I thought it was pretty silly to read over the past few weeks that President Obama was being pressured to give up his Blackberry because of security reasons. If information security controls are properly implemented, then there is no reason that the president of the U.S., or any other person for that matter, should not use a smartphone!
I was happy to see the following article published by CNN…

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Business Info Fact Of The Day: 70% Of Top 100 Websites Link To Malicious Software

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

For those of you whose business leaders do not think website filters, IDS systems or other types of security technologies are necessary business investments, show them this article…

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New Guidelines for Safeguarding Personal Data

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

Happy U.S. presidential inauguration day! 🙂 Did you take off a few minutes of work to watch the inauguration? I wasn’t going to, was planning to just catch videos on the news sites or YouTube later, but then I did, and I’m glad; it was so historical and memorable!
To celebrate, how about I tell you that NIST just made a great new document available…

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Business Info Fact Of The Day: Most Personnel Do Not Protect Laptop Information

Monday, January 19th, 2009

The Ponemon Institute seems to have been busy doing surveys throughout the world recently!
According to three separate research surveys they did in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. they report within the BNA Privacy and Security Law Reports (subscription required) about “The Human Factor in Laptop Encryption” many interesting findings. The following are some of the high-level summary statements; see the full reports for some very interesting statistics and analysis:

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Low-Tech Humor That Is SO True!

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

I got a kick out of the MSNBC article, “Eight bad tech habits to quit in the new year: These tired and tacky technology-based behaviors have got to go
While described with humor, most hit to the heart of truth. Here is a list of the eight bad habits; you can see the full descriptions in the article…

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Random thoughts: Network or security changes on inauguration day (1/20)?

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

I was at an ISACA meeting earlier this week, and over lunch I got into an interesting conversation with a group there about whether or not streaming video feeds were going to be allowed or blocked at the firewall during the inauguration of Barack Obama as U.S. president this coming Tuesday. Some views were that it was an historic event, that most people would not be working any way, and that to maintain goodwill with personnel the streaming videos would be allowed. Others said they would block the streaming video to maintain workable bandwidth, but they were setting up TV monitors throughout the facilities to allow personnel to view if they so chose to; allowing no network impact to others in the company who continued to work.

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Business Info Fact Of The Day: Smart Business Leaders Encrypt PII

Friday, January 16th, 2009

If you are a business leader you must know and understand that encrypting personally identifiable information (PII) protects that PII from being used for identity theft and other crimes should it fall into the hands of a crook. Business leaders need to know this, but unfortunately too many do not really know what encryption is, let alone how it can be used to protect PII, along with the business.

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