Archive - November 2000
Public Cloud Security Concerns Remain after Recent Study
Public clouds have been greatly promoted as an approach for organizations to reduce information technology (IT) costs and increase technology flexibility and scalability. Cloud 
computing allows smaller organizations to employ IT services that would previously have been too expensive to implement due to high up-front infrastructure costs. Companies can implement IT solutions faster in a public cloud because they do not have to spend time creating and configuring the technology environment. Larger organizations, already familiar with remote computing operations, gain flexibility and scalability by utilizing cloud services or implementing private clouds to consolidate IT resources.
Teaching Users to Spot Malicious Programs
We have worked hard to educate users of the need for computer hygiene, using anti-spyware, multiple browsers, data backups, and antivirus programs. Unfortunately, users are getting fooled into installing fake antivirus programs through clever pop-ups that work off the fear users have of viruses. These programs install themselves and trick users into paying for bogus services or they gather private information on user activities and send it off to spammers and thieves.
Does One Bad App Spoil the Bunch?
Eric Vanderburg
Smartphones are replacing traditional phones. These handheld devices offer users more than just the ability to make calls; smartphones such as the iPhone, Google Android, or Blackberry let owners browse the Internet, check email, and run applications. In many ways, the modern smartphone is a merger of the computer and the phone into one small pocket sized device delivering information to you anytime, anywhere. But what else is your smartphone up to? With all its similarities to the PC, smartphones also share one of the PC’s less desired attributes…malware.
All three vendors, Google, Apple, and RIM maintain a directory of applications, or apps, allowing developers to publish applications to a directory for downloading. Some of those applications contained malicious code allowing phones to be converted into “zombies” for launching attacks or giving attackers access to data on smartphones such as contacts, emails, attachments, browsing history, or passwords. Some applications made calls to 900 numbers or premium texting services that you could be billed for. Both Google and Apple have identified and removed malicious apps from their directory and Google has implemented measures to remotely remove malicious apps from users’ phones. However, even this fact is disturbing because it demonstrates that Google has backdoor access to the Android phone. This system that today is used to remove malware, could one day be used to deploy it. Read More
