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Symantec Analyst Relations

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Secure mobile working? We have an app for that
Brad | 10 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

I don’t need to repeat what my esteemed colleagues have already been sayingabout the mobility-related announcements we made at Symantec Vision this year. However, it is worth picking up on some of the context – not least about how organizations are dealing with the challenges.

Earlier this year we released the results of a global survey into enterprise mobility. From the 6000-plus responses, most findings corroborated what we have been hearing from our own customers. Notably that mobile technologies do make it easier, more efficient and effective, to do business – even though they create new challenges which need to be addressed.

Indeed, 41% of respondents placed mobile computing at the top of the pile of technology-...

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Don’t look the information gift horse in the mouth
Sarah Whipp | 10 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

 

We’re hearing a great deal about 'information' in the media at the moment. According to both analysts and the word on the street, businesses have greater access to a broader set of information than ever they did in the past. As one of the main areas of impact, we are told, is in marketing and advertising (LINK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17764117), I'm clearly going to be interested.

 

Information is the foundation of marketing and business as a whole. And unless you analyse it correctly, any decision you make is based on hope, luck and gut feeling alone.  This has always been true, but as the amount of unstructured information grows, the challenge for companies is ensuring that their departments and teams use a common data set for critical business decisions.

 

Information growth and real time access is a blessing to companies to make them...

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Securing the Internet of Things
Jon C | 10 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

Earlier this month, the European Commission's Digital Agenda lead Neelie Kroes launched a consultation - a.k.a. an online research study - into the Internet of Things (IoT) and its ramifications. Given that the EC has been talking about "identifiable smart objects", i.e. "things" for several years now, the obvious question is, what has prompted another consultation on the subject?

Two reasons spring to mind - the first, as Neelie herself says, "An Internet of Things with intelligence embedded into everyday objects is the next big thing." As we all know, when technologies reach the mainstream, we need to rethink what risks they pose and what can be done about them. And as IoT becomes more front of mind, such consultations are likely to get a better (and more comprehensive) response.

The second reason concerns just how much...

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Save the Date: ISTR 17 Twitter Chat
Symantec Analyst Relations | 10 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

Cross-posted from Symantec Security Response blog

Join Symantec security experts on Twitter (using the #ISTR hashtag) on Tuesday, May 15, at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET to chat about the key trends highlighted in Symantec’s recently released Internet Security Threat Report, Volume 17.

This year’s report, which covers the major threat trends observed by Symantec in 2011, highlights several troubling developments. For example:

  • Symantec blocked more than 5.5 billion malicious attacks in 2011, an increase of 81 percent over the previous year.
  • The number of unique malware variants increased to 403 million and the number of Web attacks blocked per day increased by 36 percent.
  • Targeted...
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Annual Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Reveals 81 Percent Increase in Malicious Attacks
Symantec Analyst Relations | 10 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report showcases the threat landscape in 2011, highlighting that the number of malware attacks increased by 81 percent. Read the report to get the latest on key trends including advanced targeted attacks that are expanding to focus on organizations of all sizes, increased data breaches, and a continued focus on mobile threats by attackers.

Additional resources

Multimedia:

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The walls aren't tumbling down, they are just moving
nicolas_popp | 10 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

We can blame networking. IT security was never simple, even when computers were largely stand-alone machines connected to banks of green-screened terminals. However interfaces between systems were generally inaccessible to all but operations staff.

It was when we started to allow outside connections that things stepped up a level in terms of risks. First dial-in connections, then local area networking meant that access was available to anyone who had appropriate communications tools.

It was around this time that security professionals invented the term 'defence in depth'. The idea was that security existed as circles within circles, each layer protected at the boundary by appropriate technology.

Then the Internet came along and changed everything again. Without going through the entire history of the past two decades, we're now at a point where data can be in any one of several places – on corporate systems, on computers in home offices, on...

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Securing vSphere is not just a technical challenge
GregDay-SecurityCTO | 10 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

A conversation I sometimes get involved in with customers is, "How should we secure vSphere?" The environment doesn't have to be VMware-based of course, it could be Xen, Microsoft, Red Hat or any other, but the question remains. 

From a technical perspective, the set of risks is reasonably well understood and by and large appropriate mitigations exist. For example each virtual machine, and the network connections between VMs need to be as secure as their physical equivalents. Meanwhile security holes could exist in the hypervisor layer, as with any other software package. Protections such as defence in depth, intrusion detection and prevention, patch management and so on remain much the same as in the traditional, physical world.

However, the net-new of a virtualised environment lies in how VMs are provisioned and managed. It is clearly much easier to deploy a virtual machine than a physical...

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From Big Data to Big Insight
c3lsius | 22 Mar 2013 | 0 comments

With the amount of talk about big data recently, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it was all a done deal. The truth is, however, that the can of worms has only just been opened. What started as a reasonably succinct view of the distributed information structures required to support highly scalable, event-driven online sites (think: Hadoop) has degenerated into a general discussion about the data explosion and what to do with all the islands of information that exist out there.

While purists might complain with the disintegration of the boundaries around big data, this may be no such bad thing. The fact is that companies large and small are struggling with the burgeoning size of all their data repositories, and who would not want to be able to use all available information as a business asset? 

The quantities of information organizations are dealing with today bring new challenges, from 'simply...

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What's your cloud risk appetite?
Jon C | 10 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

I recently had the opportunity to host a panel of lawyers, discussing cloud computing and its impact given the current state of legislation. I surmised three points from the debate:

  • Once contracts are in the mix, cloud very quickly becomes just another procurement mechanism. Whether it fits with how things have been done traditionally is irrelevant.
  • The hybrid cloud model is inevitable, indeed it is already here. However some behaviours remain inextricably linked to traditional, in-house models.
  • The complexities inherent in the hosted model mean that lawyers are not going to be about of jobs any time soon.

The conversation turned, inevitably given the panellists, to the risk factors which underpinned cloud computing, its procurement and operation. The fly in the ointment was the general acceptance that risk discussions have traditionally run on a parallel track to those about IT strategy or infrastructure delivery.

Such...

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Whatever happened to Green IT???
Jose Iglesias | 10 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

 

Isn't it funny how the human race can be so fickle? A few years ago, everybody - individuals, corporations, governments - was concerned about the future of the planet. To the extent that it coloured many discussions: "What's your green story?" was a pretty standard question for an industry analyst to ask, and public sector organisations were including sustainability criteria on their RFPs.

 

That was, of course, before the small matter of the global financial crisis, which understandably distracted attention from such altruistic aspirations. Current thinking suggests that we are happy to let our children's children worry about their own futures, while we concern ourselves with more pressing challenges such as keeping the business afloat, or putting food on the table.

 

Interestingly enough, the wave of attention about the planet's imminent collapse...

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