Over 100 information technology professionals attended Rochester’s annual security conference. Participants and speakers alike traveled from accross the country to learn about breaking news in information security.

UberGuard president and CEO, Chris Karr opened the technical track session Thursday morning with stories of a social engineer. At times one wondered if he had mistaken his identity for Matt Damon in a Borne Identity flick. Piggybacking into side entrances of supposedly secure buildin… Continue

Personal identity theft becomes more familiar in an electronic age.

It’s not just your patients’ information you need to take care of but your own. Just last month tens of thousands of doctors’ personal information was stolen. This data breach effected panel members of Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield across the US. How did such a catastrophe happen? An employee laptop. Read more...

http://pittsburgh.bizjourn… Continue

Fighting does exist in Cyberspace. And although it may be true that an email exchange that has gone awry could be considered cyber warfare, it is often on an elevated level involving corporations and hackers. According to ‘wisegeek’ such hackers reside alongside terrorists in their ability of destruction. But is that really fair? Computer hacking is most common among teenagers and young adults. Are they mature enough to be categorized as terrorists? Or is it even a question of maturity? The trut… Continue

Folks,

A fresh string of phishing attacks have struck financial institutions nationwide over the past two weeks, with customers of 10 banks and credit unions in California, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin receiving fraudulent text messages or automated phone calls. Please visit http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=1855&rf=101309eb

UberGuard Information Security is proud to sponsor the Second Annual Rochester Indie Fest featuring 30 musical acts from the Northeast region of the US. Based on South by Southwest, the event spanned across 3 days and 5 venues. Rochester, NY is an arts destination and is home to trumpeter, Chuck Mangione, Eastman School of Music and the Rochester International Jazz Festival. View photos from the evening on our news page and visit www.rochesterindiefest.com.

Some guy gains access to your building. You’ve never seen him before, but he offers a story of being a service provider. Could be true. You’re not in charge of that area. And he’s brought cookies. Everyone’s favorite. While you’re eating the cookies, he gets access to your entire network. Read on http://www.csoonline.com/article/479038/Social_Engineering_Anatomy_of_a_Hack?page=1

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘ransom’ or ‘hostage’? Kidnapping comes to mind. Not this time. According to Fox News, a ransom of $10 Million Dollars is being requested by hackers who are holding $8.9 Million worth of patient records hostage from a Virginia government website. Read the article - http://www.nist.org/news.php?extend.270

At the RSA Conference this week, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers cautioned about the vulnerabilities of cloud computing.* This is one of the latest changes that may be taking place in your IT world, with important implications on information security. There are others.

Situations that trigger the need for updated Information Security initiatives:
• Did a data breach or security-related shutdown occur in your organization or a similar one?
• Do you have current disaster recover plans… Continue

We are fortunate to have a plethora (and a dictionary) of ways to communicate these days. Email, texting, Instant Messaging, Facebook messages, and many, many more, including Twitter. Except if one of these systems is down or busy. Twitter was busy when I went to use it today - signaling that if you are not on board tweeting yet, you'd better give it a try. But bring all your comm channels, including a warm smile and handshake, this holiday weekend!

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Trend Micro has reported that the Conficker worm has downloaded instructions from a master system thereby updating via peer-to-peer between infected computers and installing a mystery payload on infected computers.
Researchers analyzed the code of the software that is being installed onto infected computers and suspect that the code includes a keystroke logger or some other program designed to steal sensitive data off the machine. The software was heavily encrypted, which made the code analysis… Continue