Security News

Organizations issuing iPhones to their employers can now apply security configuration best practices, which were introduced this week by the Center for Internet Security.

The cybersecurity industry was abuzz Friday after President Obama, speaking before public and private sector leaders, announced a federal “cyber coordinator” will be appointed and unveiled a five-part digital infrastructure protection plan for the country.

VMware has released fixes for multiple vulnerabilities in several of its products, including VMware Workstation, Player, ACE, Server, Fusion, ESX and ESXi. One of the vulnerabilities was caused by an error in the VMware Descheduled Time Accounting driver, which could open a way for hackers to launch a denial-of-service attack in Windows-based virtual machines. Another vulnerability identified by VMware could have enabled an attacker to execute arbitrary code. — CAM

The president promised to treat critical infrastructure as a strategic national asset, and that the cybersecurity coordinator would be responsible for orchestrating cybersecurity policy and response to cyberattacks.

In other biometric news, four states have banned smiling in driver’s license photographs. The serious poses are urged by DMVs that have installed high-tech software that compares a new license photo with others that have already been shot. When a new photo seems to match an existing one, the software sends alarms that someone may be trying to assume another…

After much speculation, President Obama confirmed Friday that a new White House office will be dedicated to coordinating digital security efforts, to be led by a yet unnamed “cybsersecurity coordinator.”

Wacky: A Singapore cancer patient was held for four hours by immigration officials in the United States when they could not detect his fingerprints — which had apparently disappeared because of a drug he was taking. [...] The drug, capecitabine, is commonly used to treat cancers in the head and neck, breast, stomach and colorectum. One side-effect is chronic inflammation…

Using financial information purchased from crooked bank insiders, a ring of thieves stole millions of dollars.

AVComparatives has posted a review of corporate products at http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/corporate-reviews. This test includes AVIRA, ESET, GDATA, Kaspersky, Sophos, Symantec and Trustport. No mention of McAfee or Trend Micro who I believe would both be in the top three deployed corporate endpoint protection solutions.

The report includes a detailed table comparing the available features of the products. It does not focus on detection rates for the most part. It does report on SPAM detection rates. Personally I think SPAM filtering belongs at the enterprise gateway not at the desktop.

As a Symantec Endpoint Protection admin, I loved one of the conclusions of the report, “The Symantec suite is, by far, the most mature and professional product tested by us.”