Stories about: AusCert

The federal government has today launched a $1.2 million national security alert service to round-out its plans to sanitise Internet feeds to families and small businesses.

I've had the pleasure of speaking and attending this year's AusCERT 2008 security conference held in Gold Coast, Australia. If you've never been to Australia, you're missing some of the best that life has to offer, and I feel the same way about the conference. Although a bit smaller than most US security conferences, it's intentionally kept small (around 1,000 participants) and makes up in quality speaker presentations and vendor participation what it lacks in headcount. One of the great attributes of the typical Aussie is their aversion to marketing hype, along with their ability to "cut the fat off a chicken" (as my grandmother used to say) and pull out the salient points. If a vendor tries to push marketing fluff about their product too much, they are likely to get verbally assailed rugby-style. Here are some of my favorite notes and quotes from selected speakers:

Local victims of Nigerian online scams now have a new ally in the fight against fraud with a partnership between the Queensland Police Service, Nigeria's Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and industry.

With the business of Internet banking changing and online threats growing, the industry needs to adapt and integrate security technology across more channels and be more collaborative to reduce fraud, according to one electronic payments specialist.

If ISPs are not trying to be part of the Internet security solution then they are part of the problem and customers should vote with their feet, according to a security officer of a European communications and hosting company.

The next time you relinquish your personal identity to simply enter a venue or purchase something, spare a thought for how the information might be stored, transmitted and used in the future. Such an overload of identity information may lead to a dramatic escalation in fraud, claims one legal eye.

The Department of Defence has chimed in on the network security debate, stating organizations need to be more proactive if they expect to ward off attackers that readily exploit the high levels of trust usually reserved for employees and known systems.

Global energy giant BP is exploring numerous techniques to prevent sensitive information making its way out of the organization - including how best to deal with employees' use of third-party services.

As many as 23 percent of home computers are infected with malware, and of those, more than 70 percent had been infected in the past year, are among the alarming findings of AusCERT's first home computer user survey.

The Convention on Cybercrime is the work of the Council of Europe and is aimed at facilitating international cooperation in the investigation and prosecution of computer crimes. Since the Convention came into being in 2001, the COE has been working to address the growing international concern over the threats posed by hacking and other computer-related crimes.

After its largest public consultation exercise ever, the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) expects that the single biggest reform to Australia's information privacy laws will be the proposal for a set of uniform and simplified principles for businesses, organisations and individuals.