The News Review:
- Waledac worm targeting July 4 spam offensive
- Postini: Google’s take on e-mail security
- Highlights of proposed Canadian spam legislation
- Cellphones ‘at hackers’ mercy’
Waledac worm targeting July 4 spam offensive
CNET News
Got to keep up to date on these things when your job is supporting Linux Windows and Mac S X systems. And yes nearly all these come from illegal sites or pirated software. It doesn’t matter what S you use when you go out on the internet without protection or common sense.
Related from Tianjigh: Worm attack chaos fails to strike
Postini: Google’s take on e-mail security
CNET News
Lund the technologist would appear to be more laid back about the anti-spam mission than Scott Petry who founded Postini in 1999 and now leads the group as a product management director at Google. During an interview Petry animatedly drew a diagram on a whiteboard to illustrate how spam directly impacts a company’s bottom line. Basically good protection can’t mask the fact that spam volumes are rising as spammers continue to take advantage of economies of scale and are able to send exponentially more spam to more targets at virtually no additional cost. Spam was a mere annoyance in e-mail’s early years in the early 1990s. The tipping point for the industry hit in 2002 when spam reached 40 percent to 50 percent of all messages. Estimates now put it as high as 90 percent of all e-mail with virus-related messages ranging from 15 percent to 50 percent of the total according to Postini. To keep up with the rising spam tide companies are forced to buy more hardware to handle the increased storage and bandwidth consumption.
Highlights of proposed Canadian spam legislation
BtoB Magazine
BannanStory posted: July 2 2009 – 3:57 pm EDT. CAN-SPAM legislation with some significant differences. The bill seeks not only to cut down on spam but also addresses phishing spyware and unsolicited text messages. It also lays out penalties for spamming allowing businesses and consumers to take civil action of up to $1 million (Canadian) against individuals and $10 million against companies or groups that violate ECPA.
Cellphones ‘at hackers’ mercy’
News24
Anyone who has access to your device potentially has access to your confidential information be it private or business related” he says. While this can have very serious implications Dronov says globally companies are implementing measures to counter this but few South African companies have cellphone security measures in place with strong encryption and authentication policies to ensure the data remains secure. “Every device needs to have an up-to-date antivirus scanner anti-spam protection and a firewall together with an anti-theft solution that can track the stolen device even after the SIM card has been changed” Dronov says. Research firm IDC reports that the mobile software industry is steadily moving towards providing standard features found on all desktop administration solutions such maintaining PC hardware and software inventories performing software distribution managing anti-virus scan files and enable remote control for systems diagnostics. Kaspersky’s Dronov says this trend will continue as more and more applications make their way on to mobile devices. “Fortunately while these risks are very real they aren’t insurmountable. It’s just a case of using your common sense just like you would against threats in the real world” he concludes.