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Social Networking, A Potential Security Vulnerability For Small And Medium Businesses
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October 1, 2010

A snippet of JavaScript code alarmed for a couple of hours many Twitter users on the 21st of September. The code exploited a specific class of security flaw in order to post itself to the affected users’ followers and to change the color of the interface. Those affected triggered the code by hovering the mouse pointer over the text.

As social networks grow, threats that exploit the trust between users are becoming increasingly popular. It is not hard then to understand why in a Panda Security survey recently released small and medium businesses pointed at social networks as the entry point for Trojans or viruses that affect their networks.

Sean-Paul Correll of Panda Security says that while all enterprises have reasons for concern, small and medium businesses are particularly vulnerable because they lack the money to employ experts who can prevent such threats.

Social networks are a security threat for small and medium businesses in other ways besides infecting their networks with malicious codes. More and more employees seem to post sensitive information on Twitter or Facebook without realizing that they might damage their company.

Ian Moyse of security firm Webroot says that small and medium sized companies that have many young employees are particularly vulnerable. Banning Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn is not a solution as employees find ways to access them, Moyse continued. He recommends employers to discuss the matter with their workers and to formulate guidelines.

However, even though the Panda Security survey found that 57% of small and medium businesses have a social media policy, almost 25% of the companies questioned had either suffered from a virus or Trojan that got into their network or from an incident in which an employee leaked sensitive data on a social network.

Correll expressed concern that most companies either don’t take seriously the social media policy or that they don’t educate their employees properly on the subject.

The survey also found that about 45% of companies use cloud services to impose social networking rules. According to Chris Boyd of GFI Software, companies should keep their employees well informed about how the monitoring of social network usage will be done.
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Chrome Frame Stable Version Released
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September 30, 2010

Google recently took Chrome Frame out of the beta and released a stable version of it. The release comes after Google fixed Chrome Frame’s plug-in conflicts and optimized its speed.

Chrome Frame is a browser plug-in that brings HTML5 and the latest web applications to users who are stuck with older browsers. Chrome Frame basically handles the HTML5 rendering for an old browser that can’t perform the task itself.

Even though the plug-in entered beta in June, Google apparently set right from the start an ambitious date for the full release. This aggressive release schedule is expected to continue for all upcoming Frame updates, at least for a couple of months.

In the meantime Google did not busy itself only with developing Chrome Frame but also with revamping some of its most popular services in order to make them compatible with the new plug-in. YouTube, Orkut, and Google Docs are all going to support Chrome Frame. Unexpectedly though, Google Calendar and Gmail are not among the services that support Chrome Frame yet. Apparently, they will be made fully compatible with the plug-in in the near future.

Google plans many improvements to Chrome Frame in the upcoming months, among them being start-up speed optimizations and the removal of the requirement for admin rights to install the software.

Chrome Frame is set to become the default wrapper plug-in for all those who use old browsers. Both Google and plenty other web applications providers will try to utilize the whole potential of Chrome Frame and offer services to users who otherwise they would not be able to reach.

Google also announced that all those currently using the Chrome Frame beta will get automatically the update to the new, stable version. Upcoming improvements will be released at the same time with the updates for Chrome.
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Binero Shuts Down “Vaktad.se” and “Sverigedemokrater.se”
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September 29, 2010

The Swedish web hosting provider Binero recently took offline two websites, “Vaktad.se” and “Sverigedemokrater.se”, both of whom had their domains registered on a single account apparently belonging to the father of The Pirate Bay, Gottfrid Swartholm Warg. The controversial content of the websites was hosted by PRQ, a provider well known for hosting Wikileaks.

Binero took the websites offline and alerted the police because it could not be proven that Gottfrid Swartholm Warg was their real owner. “Vaktad.se” and “Sverigedemokrater.se” contained personal information about security guards and individuals known as sympathizers of the Sweden democrat party.

Binero discovered that the supplied user information was inaccurate, since Gottfrid, the supposed owner, after being contacted, denied having anything to do with the websites. Anders Aleborg, Binero founder and CEO, said that his company has built over the years a good reputation and that he would not let its image be compromised.

“Sverigedemokrater.se” contained since the 20th of September, personal information such as names, phone numbers, and addresses of 5700 Sweden democrat party members or individuals who requested information about the party. It is quite probable that the information featured on “Sverigedemokrater.se” was extracted from the Sweden democrat party website, after an attack that took place on the 16th of April.

Vaktad.se contained phone numbers, addresses, personal photos, and allegations of abuse of authority and force of hundreds of security guards.

PRQ, the hosting provider, was legally responsible for the content of both websites, however it did not act in any way. Binero decided to take action because according to law, if any suspicion of false user information exists, the server provider whose name servers host the domains can also act.

Binero is known for its open-minded yet fair approach to hosting. Its policies, such as refunds for unused time once the service is discontinued and no binding period have brought it Interne world’s “Best Swedish Web Host” award in 2009 and 2010.
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Excel And PowerPoint Are Now Web Embeddable
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September 29, 2010

Microsoft has recently added additional features to its online Office suite that allow users to embed Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations on websites.

Microsoft Office Web Apps managed since its launch in June to gather a 20 million user base even though many critics described it as flawed. The service allows users to quickly and easily edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents.

Evan Lew of Microsoft said, in a video which was posted at the same time with the blog announcement of the upcoming features, that since June more than 25,000 suggestions from users worldwide were sent to the company, all of them proposing various improvements to the service.

Microsoft’s enhancing of its online suite comes about the same time as Oracle’s announcement that its new cloud Office productive suite is close to be released.

The new Microsoft Office Web Apps implementations will allow users to embed Excel charts, worksheets, and tables, and PowerPoint presentations on external web pages. Excel will change the embedded document as the original one gets updated.

Users can now edit files online better. For example, those working with worksheets can add pies, bar charts, or lines directly from their browser.

Microsoft also opened the Office.com image library which allows users to enhance their PowerPoint presentations by adding images.

An important feature that increases accessibility and that targets Excel worksheets has been also introduced. From now on users can easily view them on their mobile phones.

Microsoft made Office Apps available to additional countries: France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Russia, and Australia.

Windows Live was also improved. Now it allows users to mix Windows Live lists with LinkedIn contact lists. Hotmail will get some updates that will allow users to chat with Windows Messenger and Facebook co-workers, to manage images and videos easier, and to create sub-folders as well.
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Tariff Consultancy Publishes A Report Concerning The London Data Center Market
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September 28, 2010

Tariff Consultancy, a research company active in the United Kingdom, released recently the “London Data Center Market 2010-2015” report which sums-up the major trends affecting the London data center market.

Around the same time, INPUT published the “Assessment of the 2010 Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative” which revealed that the American government’s consolidation of data centers will take up to 12 months.

Tariff’s comprehensive report includes key client growth, the increase in high density space, analyses on build developments, a brief and recent history of the market, and a 5-year forecast for raised floor revenue and space. Comparisons between the data center development in London and other major European cities are also featured.

The report points that London remains the largest single data center in Europe, with predictions suggesting that the British capital will have by the end of the year 705,3812 feet of raised floor space.

According to the report, the prices for data centers in London went down as major firms such as Equinix, Telehouse Europe, or Telecity Group had to compete for customers.

The report also predicts that by the end of 2015 the total raised floor space in the British capital will reach 984,2532 feet due to the development of nearby sites by existing providers. Forecasts also claim that the total data center space outside London will reach 1, 345, 1442 feet by the end of 2015.

TCL’s Margrit Sessions says that more and more customers want data center space in London and that they are willing to pay a lot for it. She also points that this trend is going to face challenges quite soon, as new space for data centers becomes more limited due to the lack of connected space with power transportation links.

However, even with these difficulties, the London data center is expected to continue to develop, as lack of space will most likely lead to cost increases. Providers based in London are expected to revamp their facilities in order to get better prices for their services.

Raised floor space for data centers outside London will also be in demand, as the lower costs will temp hosting companies, service providers, and integrators.
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The E.U. Adopts New Regulations To Fight Internet Piracy
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September 27, 2010

The European Parliament took a decisive step in the fight against Internet piracy in the E.U. by voting in favor of a new and controversial copyright enforcing report.

328 out of the 573 members of the European Parliament were in favor of the text drafted by Marielle Gallo, the French center-right MEP.

The European Commission is now free to come up with a new legislation that will label piracy as a criminal activity and will punish it severely across the European Union.

France is one of the first countries that waged war on Internet piracy, by criminalizing copyright file sharing without permission.

The report which acknowledges the limits and inefficiency of the current legislation asks for better laws when it comes to the protection of online copyright files. Nonetheless, the report has already been heavily criticized. Many claim that it encourages governments to harass individuals who download content for non-commercial purposes instead of taking effective measures against criminal organizations.

E.U. member states seem eager to adopt tighter regulations, such as the “three strikes” rule which basically cuts off the Internet connection of those caught sharing copyright material online. For example, Ireland already implemented this rule after the music rights group IRMA put pressure on Eircom, the country’s largest ISP. United Kingdom’s “Digital Economy” and France’s “Hadopi”, both versions of the “three strikes” rule, have not been implemented yet, as authorities await the reactions of other member states.

Vocal critics of the report, such as civil liberties groups, attack it by saying that it tries to enforce regulations that protect the interests of businesses while suppressing the rights of individuals.

Jérémie Zimmermann of the La Quadrature du Net, a group that vehemently opposes the report, says that its implementation is a clear intention on part of entertainment companies to enforce a private copyright police. He adds that moves such as the “three strikes” and other Internet access restrictions contradict human rights, such as the right to privacy or the freedom of communication.
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HP Intends to Acquire ArcSight for 1.5 Billion US Dollars
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September 26, 2010

In a period of less than a month, Hewlett Packard has made a second major security acquisition. The global giant has announced its intentions to acquire SIEM vendor ArcSight for $1.5 billion.

ArcSight is a leading maker of SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) tools and owns around 20% of the overall SIEM market at present. Earlier in August this year, HP had acquired Fortify Software through a private purchase.

Fortify Software was a maker of secure software development technology. VP and General Manager of Information Management and Commercial Solutions Jonathan Martin indicated that HP was willing to have security as its core competency.

He described the security strategy of Hewlett Packard in four different parts. The first is secure application development and that is the reason why the company purchased Fortify Software.

To improve security visibility and evaluation, HP intends to acquire ArcSight. Other than these three parts, HP is also looking to improve on remediation. Martin said HP is going to integrate its network operations management functions. Integration will be headed by HP OpenView.

President and CEO of ArcSight Tom Reilly said in a statement that the acquisition of ArcSight can enable HP to create great security solutions that can serve modern enterprises.

HP has a wide application development and operations management solutions base, and the Enterprise Threat and Risk Management Platform of ArcSight can help HP provide an integrated security platform- one that delivers deeper context, broader visibility, and quicker remediation of enterprise level security and risk related events.

Reilly said that perimeter security was not enough. It can be safely assumed that he was targeting other enterprise security players such as McAfee and Symantec that offer a range of SIEM tools as a part of their security suites.

VP of Product and Channel Marketing at ArcSight Rick Caccia said that these enterprise security players are taking a very traditional approach toward security by securing the perimeter. He proposed an approach that would consider the previous occurrence of breach and remediate the problem as soon as possible.

However, the acquisition of ArcSight by Hewlett Packard may take some time to be completed.

According to analysts, there will be several integration challenges when such a big deal comes through. Mike Rothman, an analyst at Securosis, said that some people may view it as a barrier to ArcSight’s innovation and independence, but that immediate defections are not likely.

Also, he said that HP will need to integrate the services very well if it has to keep the large number of customers that ArcSight currently has.

SenSage and Q1 Labs are two other enterprise security players in the SIEM segment. Rothman said that the proposed price of $1.5 billion was around eight times then the annual profits of ArcSight.

The proposed deal is expected to close by the end of this year.
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Adobe Warns Users on Flash Zero-Day Attacks
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September 25, 2010

Adobe has recently warned its users that Adobe Flash was facing attacks from hackers.

Just about a week prior to the announcement, Adobe had warned its users about hacker attacks on Adobe Reader, a popular PDF Viewer. Hackers were apparently exploiting a bug in Reader PDF Viewer that was left un-patched.

The company indicated that it would take around two weeks to patch Adobe Flash and three weeks to patch Adobe Reader PDF Viewer. It was on a new security advisory that Adobe informed people about cyber criminals exploiting a critical flaw in the current version of Flash to attack Windows PCs.

According to this advisory, hackers can even gain control over computers through this vulnerability. Steven Adair from Shadowserver Foundation was credited for discovering the above mentioned vulnerability in the Adobe Flash program.

Representatives of Shadowserver were not available to reply to questions on the day the advisory was released. Various editions of Flash meant for Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris, and Android have this flaw.

An Adobe spokesperson said that hackers were mainly targeting Windows based users. The bug is even present in Adobe’s PDF creation tool and viewer known as Acrobat and Adobe Reader respectively. Since both Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader use a code to run embedded Flash, it’s not unusual that both of them are affected by the vulnerability.

These attacks are now being dubbed as ‘David Leadbetter’ after the name of a gold swing coach whose name was also used in the emails that carried rigged PDF files. Attacks are being termed as ‘clever’ and ‘scary’ because of the way they take over Windows’ defense mechanisms.

For two consecutive quarters, Adobe had to abandon its normal patch schedule as expected because of zero-day attacks.
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Tracking Search Engine Optimization Progress
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September 25, 2010

Every time search engines make some changes in their algorithms, SEO professionals have to gear up to master them. Search engine marketing is nothing short of an art that keeps evolving, and consistent effort is needed to maintain and track the progress.

Tracking SEO progress is important to know about the results of certain strategies that you may have been using. Tracking will help you figure out the techniques that are actually working for your business:

1. Website traffic analysis – It’s usually difficult to precisely predict website traffic that came through search engines. You will need to analyze your previous traffic levels instead. You can then compare these results with your actions.

Make the best of #mce_temp_url#traffic analysis software to prepare periodic traffic reports. You will have to find the correlation between your actions and website traffic levels from these reports.

1. Trying new SEO techniques – Most common problems faced by SEO experts include the analysis of above mentioned correlation between actions and website traffic levels. It can be very difficult to figure out the specific actions that caused a dip in page rank because of the delay associated with search engine optimization efforts.

Frequent changes in strategy can lead to confusion, and it is important that you stick to a particular method by deciding on a plan of action for at least a month.

1. Checking search engine page rankings – It is important to continue working on proven SEO techniques for some time without worrying about the fluctuating page ranks that are usually known as ‘Google Dance.’

This is partly because of the reason that Google will take its own time to index newly created back links and content. When it comes to search engine optimization, it’s important that you focus on your actions and forget about results for a while.
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Elliot Curtis Presents His Ideas on Microsoft’s Cloud Vision
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September 24, 2010

During the Hosting & Cloud Transformation Summit, Elliot Curtis, Director of North American partner hosting channel for the communications sector, delivered yet another session. He discussed Microsoft’s approach and perception level concerning the cloud in general. He stated that cloud has now been successful in capturing the imagination of the IT industry, which reflects in the way small and mid-sized companies are dealing with companies to which they outsource their IT services.

Curtis demonstrated that prices of hosting have been dropping significantly, and that zero price alternatives are available as well. Earlier on the same day, Tier1’s Antonio Piraino had illustrated his personal vision of a cloud landscape.

According to Curtis, Microsoft being a global player is focused on covering extensive ground, and will also work with service providers in the cloud hosting market. Since Microsoft is focused on a delivery inclusive of a service provider’s offerings, it’s understandable that Microsoft views cloud market to be big enough for everyone.

Curtis considers ‘Microsoft Cloud’ as being different from ‘Partner Cloud.’ ‘Partner Cloud’, as the name suggests, is maintained and updated is managed by a partner organization, but the cloud is built on Windows Server, SQL server, and a few other products. ‘Microsoft Cloud’, on the other hand, comprises of Windows Azure and SQL Azure that is directly delivered to customers, usually developers.

The Azure platform can also be used by the hosting service providers to deliver specific solutions to their customers. Curtis said that such hosting provider was able to get going with the Azure platform very quickly. Microsoft does control the operation and functioning of devices that are delivered to the service provider, but greater control rests with the customers who can change their behavior to suit their specific needs.

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