Next Generation Firewalls

Many companies today don't realize how important security is for their company.  For instance, many companies think that if they don't do credit card transactions, don't allow guests on their network when people come to their company, and block sites like Facebook, that they are secure and nobody can get through their gate.  Unfortunately this is not true.

In today's connected digital world, many companies are allowing their employees to use mobile devices such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets on their network.  With everything being connected, the merging of innovation and ideas come together.  This is great for companies that want to move forward and look towards the future (because everything is going mobile).  But what happens when these devices that are used outside of the business come into it?  It's ok, you have a firewall right?

Just because websites like Facebook are blocked internally and guests cannot access the web at a company, does not mean that company is safe.  Because employees use mobile devices and are using them other places besides work, they are still prone to malicious software.  They could easily go to a coffee shop and play Mafia Wars or Farmville on Facebook, and never know that someone had gotten into their laptop or embedded some malicious software or tracking software on their device through those apps.  Then, when that employee brings the laptop to work, it is on your network.  It found it's way around that great firewall that you have.

So what do you do about this situation?  Lock employee's hardware down so they can't do anything at all no matter where they go?  Wrong.  You get a Next Generation Firewall or NGFW.

A Next Generation Firewall or NGFW allows you to control applications, users, and content, not just ports.  This gives you significantly more protection for your network and allows you to identify threats that you never thought could get it.

Visit our website to learn more.

HP reports 56% jump in cybercrime costs

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal

The cost to business and government organizations of security and recovery connected to cybercrimes has risen 56 percent in the past year, a study released Tuesday said. The report by Hewlett-Packard Co . (NYSE:HPQ) said cybercrime costs to organizations it surveyed have risen to a median of $5.9 million a year, ranging from a low of $1.5 million to a high of $36.5 million.

Recovery and detection are the most costly internal activities, the report said. Over a four-week period, the organizations surveyed said they experienced 72 successful attacks per week, an increase of nearly 45 percent from last year. More than 90 percent of all cybercrime costs were caused by malicious code, denial of service, stolen devices and Web-based attacks.

The average time to resolve a cyberattack is 18 days, the report said, with an average cost of nearly $416,000. This is nearly a 70 percent increase from the estimated cost of $250,000 over a 14-day resolution period in last year’s study.

Results also showed that malicious insider attacks can be even more costly, taking more than 45 days to contain.

Read Hewlett-Packard's announcement of the cybercrime report findings by clicking here.

Written by Cromwell Schubarth.

Link to original article

Black Hat shows hacker exploits getting more sophisticated

By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY

LAS VEGAS — Fresh evidence that the Internet has become saturated with hacking groups relentlessly striving to crack into company networks grabbed attention as the Black Hat cybersecurity conference got underway here Wednesday.

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  By Sam Ward, USA TODAY

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By Sam Ward, USA TODAY

Anti-virus giant McAfee revealed how a single hacking group, dubbed Shady Rat, has infiltrated at least 72 companies and governments over the past five years, including some 49 victim organizations in the U.S.

And Dell SecureWorks senior researcher Joe Stewartpresented results of his analysis of nearly 1,000 corrupted servers. Stewart isolated 18 servers actively being used to relay information to and from infiltrated PCs inside company networks to command servers in two regions of China.

Security analysts and researchers at the conference say that's the tip of the iceberg. Nation-state spies and cybergangs "are trying to get at sensitive intellectual property and government information every hour and every minute of the day," says Andy Grolnick, chief executive of tech systems-monitoring company LogRythm.

The majority of hacks fail, but "sophistication is increasing, and some are getting through," says Grolnick. "There's value in the data they're trying to get at."

McAfee has been aware of Shady Rat's activities since 2009. Then, last March, Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's vice president of threat research, located a server storing a list of successfully infiltrated organizations.

Some 49 of the 72 hacked companies were in the United States, four in Canada and the rest sprinkled through Europe and Asia.

The hackers most likely targeted a specific employee to receive an e-mail carrying an infected Web link or attachment, then tricked the employee into activating the infected link or file, McAfee says.

McAfee declined to name any of the 72 organizations that were infiltrated. The shortest time the hackers remained inside a company's network was less than a month; the longest, 28 months.

Stewart's research zoomed in on two hacking groups going after intellectual property.

"The final destination for all the activity we're seeing is a couple of hubs in China," says Stewart. "It tells us that somebody has invested specific resources to control this operation."

Link to original post on USAToday.com