MegaUpload: What You Need to Know

There is a lesson to be learned here.  While online storage sites like MediaFire, Dropbox, YouSendIt and Box immediately jumped to defend legitimate file storage sites, like themselves, in the New York Times article, “Antipiracy Case Sends Shivers Through Some Legitimate Storage Sites” by Nicole Perlroth and Quentin Hardy; as reported by Perloth and Hardy, these public, cloud online storage sites “are inherently ideal for anyone looking to illegitimately upload and share copyrighted video and audio files.”

For the most part, the way the sites mentioned in the New York Times article work is that their users share files using a link to a file exposed publicly, and stored in a public, multi-tenant cloud.  These sites are often architected in such a way that one copy of a file, for instance a photo, is stored once and shared by multiple users to save storage space for the site.

So what is the lesson to be learned?  Data shows that employees at enterprise organization are using consumer online storage sites at work and are putting their organization at risk for copyright infringement and exposure of intellectual property.  According to a recent study by Palo Alto Networks, MegaUpload usage was found on the networks of 57 percent of the 1,636 enterprise organizations in the study.  76 percent had Dropbox and 57 percent had Box on their network.

An enterprise organization’s business users – employees, partners, and customers — trying to get their jobs done and be productive often turn to consumer online storage sites to share sensitive corporate data.  If an organization wants to protect themselves against copyright infringement and exposure of intellectual property they need to offer their users another way to share files.

Accellion works differently from these sites and is a secure, managed alternative architected for enterprise organizations, while still offering users an easy, simple way to share files.  Using Accellion, enterprise users are granted their own secure, online storage while they access, collaborate and share files anytime, anywhere and the majority of Accellion customers using a private cloud deployment behind their firewall to ensure maximum protection and control of intellectual property,  Accellion encrypts information in transit and at rest and is the safe, secure option and business users.

Whether Accellion customers use a public, private or hybrid cloud deployment they can manage, report and track files so they know who downloads what file, from what device and when they download it.  Accellion also integrates with Data Loss Prevention technology (DLP).  This inherently discourages employees from sharing illegitimate files, watching copyrighted entertainment via the corporate network, or sharing other files that are not in line with corporate policies.  Accellion helps protect an organization from inadvertent IP leaks, and helps our customers maintain compliance with HIPAA, PCI, SOX and other global government data regulations.

The recent MegaUpload news is yet another wake up call for global enterprises to take control over file sharing within their organization, and this means deploying a secure enterprise solution that enables easy file sharing for business users without exposing intellectual property or enabling copyright infringement.  In addition, organizations need to continue to monitor updates to government regulations and the impact they have for their organization’s data. This will continue to be something we watch and discuss on this forum.  Subscribe to our blog for the most up-to-date information.

By Yorgen Edholm - President and Chief Executive Officer at Accellion

(see source)

Defeating Defacement: File Integrity Protection via Application Whitelisting

It is a PR disaster. A group of ‘hacktivists’ have somehow managed to attack your company website and changed your content (which is actively being displayed to the entire world). Your phone won’t stop ringing, and your mailbox just melted down. So many questions running through your mind: ‘What just happened?’, ‘Who did this?’, ‘How did they do this?’, and most importantly ‘How can I prevent this from happening again???’. It certainly doesn’t help that this has the highest level of visibility within your organization. It’s going to be a very long day.

Sadly this scenario is now playing itself out more than ever. This is especially true with a loosely managed group of hactivists that call themselves ‘Anonymous’. The list of companies affected by Anonymous is large enough to raise national media attention—which is not exactly where your company wants to have its name mentioned.

The Problem:
Despite significant improvements to website server security, major companies continue to be the victimized by this type of vandalism. The motivation behind such attacks range from citizen protestors (“hacktivists”), to good old fashion revenge. Regardless of the motivation, you now have a very embarrassing problem on your hand.

Despite best practices of ‘locking down’ your website data files to prevent changes to them, it does no good if someone is able to gain root level access to the server; the attacker can simply open up the privileges for the data files with a single command. You need to be able to lock down these files at a lower level than standard operating system controls provides.

A Solution:
What can be done to prevent these defacements? The fundamental problem boils down to the fact that unauthorized changes are being made to the website files. The affected files could be simple html, cgi, or php, etc., but even a simple change to a .htaccess file can ruin your day. Regardless of how someone gains access to these files (there are many, many techniques that can be used to gain access such as sql injection, javascript vulnerabilities, etc), wouldn’t it be nice to know that they would not be able to modify or delete these files in any way? If you can tell your management team that the website is secure from defacement, then everyone would rest a lot easier at night.

As readers of our blog know, CoreTrace Bouncer is an application whitelisting product. The main benefit of this technology is that only programs that are explicitly defined on the whitelist are allowed to execute. Any programs not on the whitelist are considered to be ‘unauthorized’ so Bouncer prevents these unauthorized programs from executing. Bouncer takes the firewall paradigm of ‘default deny’ for network ports and applies it to program execution within the operating system.

Not only does Bouncer enforce the whitelist but Bouncer must also protect the integrity of the whitelisted applications as well. How effective would a whitelisting product be if someone could simply delete an authorized application such as notepad.exe, and replace it with a tainted program that has been renamed to notepad.exe? Bouncer blocks (from the kernel) all modifications to program files that are on the whitelist by default. Bouncer Administrators are able to define vectors of authorized change which enables transparent changes to these files so that upgrades and patches can easily be applied without difficulty.

CoreTrace has extended this kernel level ‘file integrity protection’ capability to any file which you wish to protect. While the html files will never execute, you can rest much more easily knowing that any file you wish to add to the list has this low level extra measure of protection available. This can also be applied to any file that you wish such as c:\boot.ini or the hosts file.

by Greg Valentine

Tablet Security in the Enterprise: Risk and Remedies

Today, malicious apps and malware continue to be the number one security threat in tablets, followed by public Wi-Fi eavesdropping. Tablets can easily be infected by clicking on a malicious link or by entering company credentials into a phishing page mimicking itself as a challenge page.

While we’ve seen examples of the mobile platform companies proactively addressing malware attacks – the iPad 2Smart Cover security hole fixed by Apple’s iOS 5.0.1 release and Android’s 58 malicious applications, which were downloaded onto 260,000 devices before Google remotely wiped the devices clean – it’s simply not enough. Not to mention, these remedies aren’t always applicable to tablet devices, with only a small percentage maintaining an always-on 3G connection, making it nearly impossible to implement a real-time security fix.

Two ways that mobile platform companies have typically remedied security holes exposed by malware: OS security re-architecture or stricter entry programs into app stores. However, the stricter the app adoption rules and implementation restrictions (so as to not allow a bad app into an app store), the less number of apps enter the market in a given time. While Apple has the luxury of highly scrutinizing the apps it approves, Android–coming from behind—has looser controls in an effort to balance innovation with security.

The recent Smart Cover security hole uncovered in iPad 2 and fixed by Apple’s iOS 5.0.1 release is the OS remedy; and Android’s 58 malicious applications, which were downloaded onto around 260,000 devices before Google eventually admitted it and wiped them from devices remotely, is an app store remedy.

Both of these remedies are not acceptable solutions for enterprises. Enterprise IT heads cannot wait for a new OS release or a re-evaluation by the app store when a malicious attack is siphoning confidential data from thousands of devices. The situation gets even more critical when malicious apps get on tablet devices. Unlike smartphones, most tablets are still tethered devices. Only a small percentage of them have always-on 3G connection through which a remedy can be applied immediately.

Accellion Secure Mobile Apps give enterprise tablet users the ability to securely share, edit, send and receive files in their workspace without the fear of a malicious app or link compromising their content and identity.

Accellion Secure Mobile Apps work in conjunction with Accellion Secure Collaboration to keep everything in an encrypted, secure, private container, even if a tablet user decides to download a file onto its local drive.

Should malware infect an Accellion Secure Mobile Apps user device, nothing is lost. Or, if it tries to access the tablet’s local drive, it will see nothing but a bunch of encrypted files. Users could be on an iOS, Android or BlackBerry device, and it will behave the same.

And then there is the internal threat, when people get distracted and leave behind their device by accident. If there is sensitive corporate data on the tablet and the device ends up in the wrong hands, it could easily lead to a reportable data breach. With Accellion, IT has control and management over the application, so if a device is lost or stolen, Accellion administrators can easily block access remotely and reset credentials.

Look for the discussion about tablet security to continue on this blog, but in the meantime, the more you use your tablet like a laptop, the more you should consider taking security measures.

Your iPad Is Not Your iPhone: Get Secure

Over the past year, we’ve seen the iPad become more prevalent in the corporate world – and why not? Its portabilityis ideal for employees on the go and users are able to blend work and personal use on a single device. Yet, it’s these two benefits that have introduced new security concerns for IT, with the iPad often treated more like a grown up iPhone than a corporate computer.

Of course, the laid back attitude towards iPad security is understandable. Tablet adoption has been predominantly driven by consumer usage, with public Wi-Fi and cloud computing making it simple to upload and download files and applications at will – whether Angry Birds, grocery coupons or the latest corporate PowerPoint.  But, the freedom of anytime, anywhere access, combined with the increased volume of corporate data being shared via iPads, has blurred the lines between corporate access and casual entertainment.

Yet, the harsh reality is that malicious apps and malware are the number one security threat to tablet computers, followed by public Wi-Fi eavesdropping.  Phishing attacks are phishing attacks, whether your users are on a PC or an iPad, and enterprises need to implement the same strong security measures regardless of the device.

So, what’s an IT group to do?

Individuals should be able to send, share, and access files and applications, while you ensure they’re protected from malicious content. Accellion Secure Mobile Apps is one viable option – providing around-the-clock secure access to files to a range of mobile devices, plus encrypting documents for future, offline use. Plus, if the device is ever lost or stolen, administrators can easily block access remotely and reset credentials.

Let’s face it: your employees were likely attracted to the iPad because it makes their life easier – and maybe a little more fun. So, the key is to boost security while enabling employees to work and interact exactly as they do today.  The discussion on tablet security is far from over, so look for more insight on our blog.

Some insights from the 2011 Gartner Data Center Conference

The first day kicked off quite early with Gartner presenting top 10 major IT trends and then they had several individual sessions.   Some notes on Big Picture trends:

1. Physical Infrastructure management is becoming very critical.  One stat shared was that one data center could consume many time more  energy than 100 offices that depend on those data center application and services.

2. Compute Fabrics are starting to emerge in the enterprise and it is going to accelerate.  Compute fabrics are also known as Cisco UCS and HP
Converged Infrastructure and refer to the ability for the enterprise to seamlessly add and expand compute capacity that comes pre-integrated with server, storage and networking elements.  Our perspective has been ”Converged Management for Converged Infrastructure”.  If  infrastructure is converging, why shouldn’t management.

3.  Hybrid clouds are going to be the norm.  Hybrid clouds are going to be driven more by need to focus core capabilities within the firewalls and
outsourcing non-essential applications.  This is differentiated than enterprises using hybrid clouds purely for bursting capacity.

4.  Challenges in cloud computing are going to be around integration and security.  Specifically around integration they mentioned that integration costs could get so high that the gains from cloud could often be lost in the integration costs.

by Ashish Kuthiala

Buried Alive by Consumer Applications in the Workspace

An article in GigaOM citing new research by Unisys on the consumerization of IT recently piqued my interest.   According to the research, IT pros underestimate the use of consumer technologies in the workplace by a whopping 50%.  In fact, IT decision-makers gave themselves a rating of only 2.9 for overall support of employee owned mobile devices, social applications and integration of social apps with enterprise applications.  According to Isabella Mark, director of Global Solution Management at Unisys, IT is falling behind in addressing and benefiting from consumer technologies due to the sheer volume they now have to deal with.  Each new technology that employees bring into the workplace is another technology that IT needs to figure out how to use, manage, or perhaps even ban.

For many, Dropbox represents the poster child for the consumerization of IT.  Free and easy to get your hands on, the Dropbox consumer file sharing app has spread like wild fire through organizations.  And now IT and security teams are grappling with how to deal with the security risks of unmanaged, untracked file sharing of enterprise data via personal Dropbox accounts.  Learn more about the privacy concerns of consumer file sharing apps that stem from the consumerization of IT in our latest whitepaper, “Beyond Dropbox: Requirements of Enterprise Class Secure File Sharing.”  While Accellion’s solutions are enterprise-class, they are created for ease-of-use, and also provide the security and management that IT requires.

Stillman, J. (2011, November 18). Consumerization study: It pros swamped, behind on mobile. Retrieved fromhttp://gigaom.com/collaboration/consumerization-study-it-pros-swamped-behind-on-mobile/

Nina Seth - Product Marketing Manager at Accellion.

Evolving Mobile Data Security Risk

In 2010, Oracle surveyed more than 3,000 people from around the globe to discover how people communicate. The overwhelming response was mobile, mobile, mobile. In 2011, Oracle conducted a second survey calling it The Future of Mobile Communications-Take Two. This upgraded report delivered interesting results about mobile phone usage and the perceptions of mobile devices.

I don’t think we have to discuss the “bring your own device” (BYOD) trend or the fact that employees are using mobile devices to share files & access business applications. The lightning fast proliferation of data hungry users is the thing that organizations and IT managers are trying to manage. The respondents of Oracle’s 2011Future of Mobile Communications-Take Two report confirm that these trends are permanent. That’s bad news for our telephone booth frequenting super hero.

How data hungry were the users from the survey? Over the past year alone, mobile data usage increased 47%. Even more remarkable is the fact that 55% of those surveyed reported having downloaded a mobile app, up significantly from 42% in 2010.  The most dangerous threats posed by downloaded mobile apps are well-documented in Veracode’s Mobile app top 10 list. Even more notable was the fact that 25% of mobile web users are mobile only.

When respondents were asked if they think that information stored or transmitted with a mobile device is secure, the results were disproportionate. Thirty-two percent of those asked thought their information was secure. Sixty-eight percent said that they didn’t think the information stored or transmitted with a mobile device was secure.

People can be their own worst enemy when it comes to security.  Ten percent of all iPhone users have 0000 or 1234as a device password. The fact that there are mobile data security programs available and not being used is indefensible.

For all these reasons, mobile devices are the most popular target for data theft.  In several upcoming blog posts we will discuss some Dos and Don’ts of mobile device security and take a closer look at mobile security compliance.

Nagar, M. (Designer). (2011). Introduction and evolution. [Web Graphic]. Retrieved fromhttp://www.bluegenietech.com/blog/tag/history-of-mobiles/