Information Security

The risks from Cyber cime - Hacking - Loss of Data Privacy - Identity Theft and other topical threats - can be greatly reduced by implementation of robust IT Security controls ...

Uri Rivner CEO and Co-Founder at Refine Intelligence

What's the worst that can happen?

Here are some further thoughts on the LinkedIn compromise, following my previous blog post. Over the years I did some unscientific research on LinkedIn. Here’s some unofficial statistics I have on LinkedIn accounts: about 25% of LinkedIn users use their real corporate email account as the user name. That’s not a good practice for many reasons, som...

13 June 2012 /security

Uri Rivner CEO and Co-Founder at Refine Intelligence

Is your LinkedIn Password Compromised?

The recent LinkedIn accounts compromise in which 6.5 million password hashes were published in the Russian hacker community grabbed a lot of media attention. In a hellish period of publicly known breaches that hit the front page news, with perimeter security defenses failing left and right in any possible vertical and geography, this incident stirs...

11 June 2012 /security

Pat Carroll Founder/Executive Chairman at ValidSoft

Forgotten password? You're not alone

Many of us will have come back from the extended holiday period ready to start the New Year with a bang, only to realise that we’ve forgotten our computer password and can’t do anything until the IT department resets it. It’s not just the fact that you’ve been out of the office for 10 days. By insisting on “strong” passwords, IT departments are in...

03 January 2012 /security

Retired Member 

How Safe is Your Mobile Wallet?

Consumers love alternatives, especially if the alternative is easy to use and already part of their everyday life. However, most consumers who undertake e-commerce using their mobile device are woefully unaware of the risks. Even when they do, there tends to be an ‘it-will-not-happen-to-me’ response. We are in some ways in the technological dawn ...

20 December 2011 /security /payments

Pat Carroll Founder/Executive Chairman at ValidSoft

Hello this is your fake bank calling...

With the UK’s “Get Safe Online Week” drawing to a close today, hopefully awareness of fraudulent online activity is on the up. The campaign highlighted all sorts of risks consumers may face with online banking, online shopping and their use of smartphones to browse internet websites, and explained how they could take care and be aware. Unfortunate...

11 November 2011 /security

Retired Member 

eSecurity Infrastructures: Reflections and Lessons

In view of many eSecurity projects launched by banks & governments to secure their online services and organizations to secure remote access-control/ information assets, lets pause a little to reflect on key lessons in the last 10 years. Much of the lessons I will summarize below come from experiences within the Nordics, but hopefully are gene...

09 November 2011 /security /retail

Retired Member 

New Requirements for Point to Point Encryption

Well they have arrived. After more than a year of discussion and debate the new requirements for Point to Point Encryption (P2PE) have finally been released by the PCI SSC. These requirements, which are contained in the Point to Point Encryption: Encryption, Decryption and Key Management within Secure Cryptographic Devices (Hardware/Hardware) v1....

18 October 2011 /security /payments

Retired Member 

Mobile Doesn't Have to Mean Insecure

In my last blog, I stated that security is the number one concern for retail bank customers and investment bank managers. In fact, at one time or another, nearly all of our investment banking clients who are considering building mobile applications for their employees have asked, “what if they lose their iPad on the Tube?” – a good question. I thi...

22 September 2011 /security

Retired Member 

Are compromised certificates the root of all Evil?

I returned from holiday to find another attack vector has raised its ugly head. Reading the latest news, at least two hundred fraudulent SSL certificates (and oossibly over five hundred) have been issued from a trusted root certificate authority (CA). In this case, it appears that Diginotar, the Dutch trusted third party has been breached and spoo...

15 September 2011 /security /regulation

Lachlan Gunn Executive Director at European Association for Secure Transactions

Heat from your fingers could disclose your PIN at an ATM

Thermal cameras can apparently detect heat signatures from your fingers on the keys after you have left an ATM. The degree of heat residue can also indicate in which order you touched them! This technology will not work effectively on metal key pads, only on plastic ones, and the successs window is limited. The message "cover your PIN when ma...

30 August 2011 /security