Cyber Security

Electronic communications networks must be ultra secure in order to build confidence, disposal of physical documents also poses a security risk 

INFORMATION security experts last week urged businesses in SA that deal with personal information to review their cyber security and the disposal of physical documents practices constantly to protect clients’ and employees’ information.

Data events such as hacking, data loss, unauthorised data use, and the physical disposal of documents all present risk to businesses and consumers.

According to Metrofile , an information and records management firm, secure disposal of hardcopy documents is often overlooked and yet it is a crucial aspect of data protection.

Communications Minister Dina Pule said last week that cyber crime was a drawback that went with advances in technology. She said, "our electronic communications networks must be ultra secure in order to build confidence amongst the users of e-commerce platforms".

The Department of Communications plans to present the National Cyber Security Policy Framework to the Cabinet next month.

Last Saturday was Data Privacy Day — an international awareness day aimed at educating governments, businesses, industries and citizens on the importance of protection of personal information. While the day was recognised globally by business, corporate SA was grappling with privacy legislation, Dean Chivers, a director of tax and legal affairs at Deloitte, said last week.

As the Protection of Personal Information (PPI) Bill looms, many companies are racing against time to grasp the compliance demands of the legislation, he said.

"The PPI bill is a natural progression for SA. At its most basic, the legislation reinforces every South African’s constitutional right to privacy," he said. "At the other end of the scale, it brings the country into line with most of its significant international trading partners, a factor that builds confidence when information is transmitted across borders."

Mr Chivers said: "While companies will need to reassess their data management process, analyse their security, amend processes and change their contracts, companies should not look at the Protection of Personal Information Bill as purely an inconvenience.

"Rather, by aligning the requirements of the bill to existing projects and reporting structures, the bill can offer a sustainable and measurable return on investment".

Gianmarco Lorenzi, the CEO of Cleardata, part of Metrofile, said it was ironic that most businesses would spend thousands of rands protecting their electronic data through the use of firewalls and high-tech information security, but would let their paper leave the building in the hands of a stranger.

Mr Lorenzi said physical records containing personal information, including copies of identification documents, street addresses and banking details, must be destroyed in a manner that prevents reconstruction in an intelligible form if financial, reputational and legal repercussions are to be avoided.

"The shredding of unwanted documents remains the most effective way for businesses and industries to practice document reconstitution," he said.

Posted on BusinessDay 

THABISO MOCHIKO

What's best for my computer: Hibernate, sleep, or shut down?

Q: Does putting my computer to sleep help extend the battery life? What else can I do to save energy and make my new computer last? 

A: We’ve all heard stories about what's best for a computer’s battery. That’s why I was excited to make friends with Fred Peters, president of Huntington Beach IT Services.

In addition to teaching computing courses in Orange County, Calif., Peters happily makes house calls to revive frazzled computers and the people who rely on them.

Here are his expert tips on how to keep your new laptop running smoothly.

Sleep mode vs. shutting down 

Peters notes that your work process will determine whether it’s more efficient to use “Sleep” mode or simply shut down the computer. “It is never fun to have to consistently wait any amount of time if the shut downs are too frequent,” he says. "‘Sleep’ requires more power, but it boots up faster, while ‘Hibernate’ uses less power, but takes longer to come online.” That same logic applies to shutting off your computer completely.

“Your computer will become obsolete before you wear out your computer by turning it on and off a lot,” he adds. “It also doesn't take more energy to start a computer than to keep it running.”

Sleep mode requires a constant, though reduced use of power (0-6 watts). Peters also notes that colorful screensavers do nothing to conserve energy. Accessing your computer remotely with the Wake on LAN feature also can drain the power.

To get the most for your money, Peters advises adjusting power settings so that it automatically goes into Sleep/Standby mode after about 15 minutes of inactivity, and then shut it down at the end of your day.

Bionic battery life 

To get the most out of your computer battery, Peters says to you have to give it a workout. Don’t keep your machine plugged in to an outlet. Instead, discharge the battery daily.

Size does matter 

By purchasing a laptop, Peters says that you are ahead in the energy-saving game. Laptops use about 15-60 watts, while desktops use 65-250 watts — plus another 15-80 watts for a monitor.

He also adds that you can further conserve energy by using an LCD monitor and ditching the high-end video card unless it’s absolutely necessary. Also, turn off printers and other peripherals when they are not in use.

To kill “vampire power,” TreeHugger.com suggests purchasing a power strip. With all peripherals connected to one source, it’s easy to simply flip the switch on power hogs any time.

Establish a backup process 

In addition to Peters’ great advice about conserving energy, I discovered the hard way that it also pays to save backup versions of your work. Invest in an external hard drive to hold your digital music library, special photos, and other key documents. Frequent backups ensure that your data doesn’t die with your laptop.

While you are in the process of backing things up, create an emergency file (on good old-fashioned paper) that contains your computer’s serial number along with other key data such as your credit card numbers and phone numbers to reach each company, along with contact info to your insurance company. Access to that information is vital, particularly in the event of an accident, fire, computer theft, or other catastrophe.

Peters warns that those key pieces of information are not safe on your computer. If you are like me and absolutely need a digital holding space for those nuggets of information, he suggests sites like LastPass as your online vault.

Originally posted on Yahoo Green

Related articles

• Windows 7 Power Options And Sleep Modes Explained (makeuseof.com)
• Help me stop my computer from dozing off. (ask.metafilter.com)
• When You Don't Want Your Laptop to Go to Sleep (okphone.wordpress.com)

Cyber Threats Forecast for 2012

The year ahead will feature new and increasingly sophisticated means to capture and exploit user data, as well as escalating battles over the control of online information that threatens to compromise content and erode public trust and privacy. Those were the findings announced by the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC) and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) in today's release of the Georgia Tech Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2012. The report was released at the annual Georgia Tech Cyber Security Summit, a gathering of industry and academic leaders who have distinguished themselves in the field of cyber security.

According to GTISC, GTRI and the experts cited in the report, specific threats to follow over the coming year include, among others:

* Search Poisoning -- Attackers will increasingly use SEO techniques to optimize malicious links among search results, so that users are more likely to click on a URL because it ranks highly on Google or other search engines.

* Mobile Web-based Attacks -- Expect increased attacks aimed specifically against mobile Web browsers as the tension between usability and security, along with device constraints (including small screen size), make it difficult to solve mobile Web browser security flaws.

* Stolen Cyber Data Use for Marketing -- The market for stolen cyber data will continue to evolve as botnets capture private user information shared by social media platforms and sell it directly to legitimate business channels such as lead-generation and marketing.

"We continue to witness cyber attacks of unprecedented sophistication and reach, demonstrating that malicious actors have the ability to compromise and control millions of computers that belong to governments, private enterprises and ordinary citizens," said Mustaque Ahamad, director of GTISC. "If we are going to prevent motivated adversaries from attacking our systems, stealing our data and harming our critical infrastructure, the broader community of security researchers -- including academia, the private sector and government -- must work together to understand emerging threats and to develop proactive security solutions to safeguard the Internet and physical infrastructure that relies on it."

Today's Georgia Tech Cyber Security Summit is one forum where the IT security ecosystem can gather together to discuss and debate the evolving nature of cyber threats, and to chart the course for creating solutions through collaborations among industry, government and academia. The Summit was keynoted by Admiral William J. Fallon, U.S. Navy (retired) and included a panel of security experts from Equifax, The Financial Services Roundtable, Mobile Active Defense, Reputation.com and GTRI.

"Our adversaries, whether motivated by monetary gain, political/social ideology, or otherwise are becoming increasingly sophisticated and better funded," said Bo Rotoloni, director of GTRI's Cyber Technology and Information Security Laboratory (CTISL). "Acting as individuals or groups, these entities know no boundaries, making cyber security a global problem. We can no longer assume our data is safe sitting behind perimeter-protected networks. Attacks penetrate our systems through ubiquitous protocols, mobile devices and social engineering, circumventing the network perimeter. Our best defense on the growing cyber warfront is found in cooperative education and awareness, best-of-breed tools and robust policy developed collaboratively by industry, academia and government."

The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the nation's leading public research universities and the home of groundbreaking cyber security research and academic initiatives through GTISC, GTRI and other facilities across campus. These efforts are focused on producing technology and innovation that will help drive economic growth, while improving human life on a global scale. The complete 2012 Cyber Threat Report is available at: http://gtsecuritysummit.com/report.html

Related articles

• Cyber Threats Forecast for 2012 (scienceblog.com)

Speed Up Your Windows XP

Pursue Some tricks we can make our Windows more faster that never happen before and usually these all are unnecessary for each time. Some features are usually for only looking attractive. Optimizing Display Settings Windows XP mostly like for its visual interface. We do not interfere that but on this visualization has more extra feature that does not need ever without wasting system resource. Lets see how we can disable it-
1. Go to Start Menu
2. Click Setting.
3. Click Control Panel
4. Click System.
5. Go Advance Tab
6. Click Setting under Performance group
7. Off only the following ticked
* Show Shadows under Menu
* Show Shadows under Mouse Pointer.
* Show Translucent Selection Rectangle
* Use drop shadows for icons labels on desktop.
* Use visual style on windows and buttons

OPTIMISE YOUR PAGEFILE

If you give your pagefile a fixed size it saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file.
1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties
2. Select the Advanced tab
3. Under Performance choose the Settings button
4. Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change
5. Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file. Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.

REMOVE THE DESKTOP PICTURE 

Your desktop background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. Removing it will improve performance.
1. Right click on Desktop and select Properties
2. Select the Desktop tab
3. In the Background window select None
4. Click Ok

REMOVE FONTS FOR SPEED

Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.
1. Open Control Panel
2. Open Fonts folder
3. Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.

Related articles

• Setting the Windows Virtual Memory, why you need to and what about SSDs? (ghacks.net)
• Upgrade computer to avoid slow performance (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Font Load Unload, Load Fonts Without Installing Them (ghacks.net)
• BluePoison Disables Windows 8 Immersive Start Menu, Unlocks Hidden Features (lifehacker.com)

SA Symantec Intelligence Report

Johannesburg - Symantec on Tuesday announced the results of the September 2011 Symantec Intelligence Report, which saw phishing attacks in South Africa increase once again.

The country is now positioned as the most targeted geography for phishing, with one in 133.1 emails.

This month’s analysis also reveals that a deluge of malicious email-borne malware has left a clear mark on the threat landscape for September. Approximately 72 percent of all email-borne malware in September could be characterised as aggressive strains of generic polymorphic malware, first identified in the July Symantec Intelligence Report. At the end of July, this rate was 23.7 percent, in August it fell slightly to 18.5 percent before soaring to 72 percent in September.

“This unprecedented high-water mark underlines the nature by which cyber criminals have escalated their assault on businesses in 2011, fully exploiting the weaknesses of more traditional security countermeasures,” said Paul Wood, Senior Intelligence Analyst, Symantec.cloud.

Further analysis reveals that the social engineering behind many of these attacks has accelerated with the adoption of a variety of new techniques, such as pretending to be an email from a smart printer/scanner being forwarded by a colleague in the same organisation has been detected.

“The idea of an office printer sending malware is an unlikely one, as printers and scanners were not actually used in these attacks, but perhaps this sense of security is all that is required for such a socially engineered attack to succeed in the future,” Wood said.

Although spam levels remained fairly stable during September, Symantec Intelligence observed the use of identified vulnerabilities in certain older versions of the popular WordPress blogging software on a large number of web sites across the internet. Spam emails containing links to these compromised web sites are being spammed out. It is however important to note that blogs hosted by WordPress itself seem to be unaffected.

Additional research reveals that JavaScript is becoming increasing popular as the programming language used by spammers and malware authors. Spammers use it to conceal where they are redirecting pages, and in some cases, to conceal entire web pages.

“For spammers, hosting simple JavaScript obfuscation pages on free hosting sites can increase the lifetime of that site before the site operator realises the page is being used for malicious activity,” Wood said. “JavaScript is popularly used for redirecting visitors of a compromised web site to the spammer's landing page. While some of these techniques have been common in malware distribution for some time, spammers are increasingly using them.”
Originally posted on iol scitech

Make Your Computer Energy Efficient

I know that my computer has energy-efficiency settings. Yours does, too. But I almost never mess with them. For some reason, for a lot of us, messing with the settings is one of those things you hear about, and know about, but put off to take care of “later,” when you find yourself at the computer with “some free time.” But let’s be honest—your free time at your computer (and mine!) is a lot more likely to be devoted to trolling gossip sites and Facebook than to fine-tuning your computer’s energy settings. So let’s take a minute and change that today. Here’s some very simple advice—some of which you can put into action right now, while you read this entry. You’ll save energy going forward, and you’ll assuage that guilty conscience by finally taking some easy little steps toward a more efficient home or office.

* Hibernation: With winter dragging on and on, doesn’t hibernation sound so appealing right now? Well, your computer feels the same way. Allow it to take nice little naps during the day when you wander away on coffee breaks, lunch breaks, talk-to-your-coworkers-in-the-hallway breaks, or whatever it is you do when you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Ok, first, go into your computer’s power management panel… Seriously, do this right now! Now, set the display and the hard drive to both go to sleep after 10 minutes or less of inactivity. Next, make sure the entire system is set to go into standby/sleep mode within 20-30 minutes. The lower you can keep the numbers in these settings, the better. That was so easy, right?

* Screen saver = energy waster: Can you believe it? Well, it’s true! Screen savers are a leftover idea from the early days of picture tube monitors, completely unnecessary for today’s monitors. They actually use a lot more energy than simply setting your monitor to dim itself before going to sleep would. So ditch the scrolling photos of frogs and blades of grass for some truly green action: Set your monitor to dim after 5 minutes or less of inactivity.

* Dim your watts: The brightest setting on your monitor causes it to gobble up twice as much energy as the dimmest setting. Save those wasted watts by keeping the monitor running on a much dimmer setter all the time. As the daylight changes wherever you’re using your computer, adjust the brightness.

* Strip smarter: Need we have the power strip conversation again? So, you know that it’s a good idea to plug electronics into a power strip to avoid that phantom load we’ve talked about before. This is an especially good idea when it comes to your computer, which tends to hang out with a lot of power-hungry friends like printers and speakers. The best solution of all is to get a smart plug strip, which will automatically cut the power flow when your computer and its posse aren’t in use. Automatic is good, because it’s one less thing for you to remember!

BioPDF PDF Writer

BioPDF PDF Writer
Version: 6.0.6.745 
License Type: Free
Price: Free
OS: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 
File Size: 3987 KB 
Author: BioPDF


Download Now


BioPDF PDF Writer installs easily, automatically downloading and installing the Ghostscript Light PDF printer driver for which it's a front-end. It also offers the same watermarking, password protection, and merging. The only real differences seem to be a slight variation in the install routine and pricing. Where Bullzip is free but will accept donations via PayPal, BioPDF can be registered and paid for at the program's Web site.

As downloaded, BioPDF PDF Writer is free for personal use. No matter which version you opt for, opt for one. Bullzip and BioPDF PDF Writer are in a class of their own when it comes to ease of installation, ease of use, and features. Another big plus--no nags or ads.




For admins, bioPDF is simple and flexible to adapt and deploy, with support for unattended setup scripts, Citrix Metaframe, and more. End-users find the PDF writer fast and intuitive to use, emboldened by the fact that the interface is localized into multiple languages. This leads to swift adoption and low support requirements. When all users can and do print to PDF, fewer potentially harmful or unreadable file formats are distributed and paper use is greatly reduced throughout the organization.

How Does it Work?

The bioPDF PDF Writer works as a Microsoft Windows printer and allows you to write PDF documents from virtually any Microsoft Windows application.

Feature Overview 

• Print to PDF from almost any Windows application.
• Supports 64-bit operatings systems.
• Direct output to the same file each time or prompt for destination.
• Control if the printer should ask if you want to see the resulting PDF document.
• Control settings and prompts programmatically.
• Setup can run unattended.
• Graphical user interface.
• Password protect PDF documents.
• 128/40 bit encryption.
• Quality settings (screen, printer, ebook, prepress).
• Set document properties.
• Watermark text, size, rotation, and transparency.
• Superimpose/background documents.
• Appending/prepending documents.
• User interface control.
• Command line interface to all settings.
• COM/ActiveX API interface for programmatic control.
• Microsoft.NET API and command line API.
• Support for Citrix MetaFrame
• Support for Windows Terminal Server
• Create BMP, EPS, PS, PNG, PCX, JPEG, and TIFF files as alternative to PDF documents.
• Create linearized PDF files for optimized web viewing.
• Initial zoom settings.
• Page thumbnails.
• Create one PDF for all pages or one file per page.
• Individual horizontal and vertical resolution for image creation.
• Configure text and graphics alpha bits to support smooth edges in images.

Download and See For Yourself