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Amazon releases secure cloud for government | Software, Interrupted – CNET News

August 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Cloud service provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced AWS GovCloud, a new AWS Region designed to allow U.S. government agencies and contractors to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements.

Amazon’s move reflects the ongoing adoption of public cloud services by government entities, including the U.S. Treasury’s Recovery Accountability and Transparency board, which hosts Recovery.gov and Treasury.gov on AWS, as well as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which processes telemetry data and high-resolution images on an array of EC2 cluster compute instances.

via Amazon releases secure cloud for government | Software, Interrupted – CNET News.

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Symantec releases next-gen email archiving software – Computerworld

August 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Symantec today announced its next-generation email and content archiving software, Enterprise Vault 10, which now purports to automatically classify email content and metadata and assign the appropriate archiving and retention policy to it.

Enterprise Vault 10 also has the ability to capture and archive social networking interactions for regulatory compliance. Symantec originally announced that capability at the company’s Visions 2011 conference in May.

Through the new archiving feature, any posts to an organization’s publicly-facing social media outlets — including blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds — can be preserved to comply with open-records requests and industry regulations such as the supervision requirements under the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

Symantec said it was able to add social media capture through its partnerships with Actiance, CommonDesk, Globanet, Hanzo and Socialware.

Enterprise Vault 10′s classification technology can also be used as a filter to speed up the search and review process for electronic discovery and legal hold requests in civil suits, the company said.

via Symantec releases next-gen email archiving software – Computerworld.

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E-Discovery and Cyber-Shredding at News of the World | i-Sight Investigation Software Blog

July 26, 2011 By 1 Comment

The deletion of 500 GB of incriminating email archive data dating back to 2005 means the prosecution in the News of the World phone hacking case may be missing valuable e-discovery material.

One reporter has even gone so far as to suggest that Rupert Murdoch’s reason for shutting down the paper was to allow him to get rid of the electronic evidence.

Reuters law reporter Alison Frankel writes that Murdoch “may not be obliged to retain documents that could be relevant to civil and criminal claims against the newspaper–even in cases that are already underway. That could mean that dozens of sports, media, and political celebrities who claim News of the World hacked into their telephone accounts won’t be able to find out exactly what the tabloid knew and how it got the information.”

Obstruction of Justice

The e-discovery implications of the e-mail deletions are significant in light of the ongoing police investigation into the hacking allegations. If the executive can be identified, it’s likely that criminal charges will be filed for obstruction of justice.

“A company is supposed to suspend its routine destruction of electronically stored information if litigation is reasonably anticipated,” says Rebecca Shwayri, an attorney and e-discovery expert at Carlton Fields. “At the time the UK company shut down in the phone tapping case, litigation could definitely be anticipated. Government investigations were already being threatened once the news story broke. Arguably, a litigation hold should have been applied (at the very latest) at that time,” she says.

via E-Discovery and Cyber-Shredding at News of the World | i-Sight Investigation Software Blog.

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Security experts knock Google on PC infection warnings – Computerworld

July 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Google has taken the unprecedented step of warning millions of users whose PCs it believes are infected with fake security software and other malware, the company said yesterday. But some security experts are leery of Google’s move.

The warning appears as a bright yellow banner that reads “Your computer appears to be infected,” at the top of the page after users conduct a search with Google.

Google has started to slap this warning at the top of its search results when it suspects that the PC is infected with malware.

“It appears that your computer is infected with software that intercepts your connection to Google and other sites,” the alert continues. The alert also includes a link to a help page that provides more information on the alert and infection, as well as advice about how to remove the malware.

Google first posted the warning on Tuesday after it detected what it called “unusual search traffic” when doing maintenance at one of its data centers. Google decided that the abnormal traffic was a symptom of infected PCs.

“This particular malware causes infected computers to send traffic to Google through a small number of intermediary servers called ‘proxies,’” said Damian Menscher, a Google security engineer, in a blog post updated Wednesday.

Menscher added that the proxy traffic originated from fake antivirus (AV) programs, often called “scareware.” Millions of machines are infested with the malware, he said.

via Security experts knock Google on PC infection warnings – Computerworld.

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Microsoft Add Real-Time Collaboration to Office Web Application

July 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Microsoft Adds Real-Time Collaboration

Last year, Microsoft introduced Office Web Apps in a response to competition from browser-based productivity tools such as the popular Google Docs. Although the initial release allowed collaboration for Excel and OneNote, it did not support simultaneous editing of Microsoft Word or PowerPoint files — two of the most popular applications in the suite. Prior to the most recent enhancement, users who wanted real-time document collaborative document editing, like what has long been available in Google Docs, had to purchase the more feature-rich desktop version of the software.

According to Microsoft, the company designed the collaboration feature based on feedback from user community and observation of usage of the software. The new collaboration features does not require additional plug-ins or software. The new feature allows user to have a real-time view of which other users are making changes and where those changes are occurring.

Handling Simultaneous Editing

Those familiar with file sharing may be wondering how simultaneous editing is supported without creating a mess of overlapping changes. Microsoft has designed the software to lock the files by section as soon as a user begins typing, ensuring no changes are occurring to the same section, but allowing editing on other portions of the document. Once the document is locked, users connected  to the file are notified and the changes are published as soon as the file is saved and the lock is released and the contributor’s document is updated with others’ changes. If the user does not save, the changes are discarded and never shared.

Micrososft provides a number of visual indicators to inform users that changes have been introduced to a document that is being edited, such as the status bar is updated with a refresh message.

via Microsoft Add Real-Time Collaboration to Office Web Application.

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U.S. Guidelines Aim to Bolster Software Security – NYTimes.com

June 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Homeland Security Department unveiled a new system of guidance on Monday intended to help make the software behind Web sites, power grids and other services less susceptible to hacking.

The system includes an updated list of the top 25 programming errors that enable today’s most serious hacks. It adds new tools to help software programmers eliminate the most dangerous types of mistakes and enable organizations to demand and buy more secure products.

The effort to improve software security has been three years in the making, according to Robert A. Martin, principal engineer at Mitre, a technology nonprofit organization that conducts federal research in systems engineering.

The costs of flaws or omissions that make software susceptible to attack was highlighted by a number of recent attacks that resulted in the theft of credit card information, user names and passwords from government and banking sites.

During an online news conference, government officials pointed out that a wide range of stakeholders had an interest in seeing the top 25 errors addressed, and they stressed the need for better training and education for people writing software.

via U.S. Guidelines Aim to Bolster Software Security – NYTimes.com.

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BBC News – FBI targets cyber security scammers

June 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A gang that made more than $72m (£45m) peddling fake security software has been shut down in a series of raids.

Co-ordinated by the FBI, the raids were carried out in the US, UK and six other countries.

The money was made by selling software that claimed to find security risks on PCs and then asked for cash to fix the non-existent problems.

The raids seized 40 computers used to do fake scans and host webpages that tricked people into using the software.

via BBC News – FBI targets cyber security scammers.

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Guidance Software Enhances EnCase E-Discovery Product, Adds Office 365 Support

June 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

EnCase 4.2

Version 4.2 of EnCase includes more than a dozen new features, including the following:

A “check-the-box” collection and processing “wizard” to help specify what electronically stored information should be collected and/or processed, which helps teams set up repeatable processes

Automation features including load balancing and the ability to build workflows, which enables better prioritization and faster processing

Support for Microsoft Office 365, meaning the ability to collect electronically stored information from Microsoft Office Exchange and SharePoint in the cloud

via Guidance Software Enhances EnCase E-Discovery Product, Adds Office 365 Support.

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Open Source Could Change the Future of E-Discovery

June 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Software developers on the outskirts of the e-discovery field are working on several open-source projects to make the electronic search-and-analysis process into a cost-free, standards-based proposition.

Independent projects are underway from a contract programmer in Houston, a team of information management experts throughout Europe and Australia, and a search engine consulting firm in Virginia. Their mutual goal: to help companies get respectable e-discovery software and make the technology feasible for every size of lawsuit and budget.

“I think where we’ll see open-source software come into its own is if we get a generation of really computer-savvy lawyers. … It’ll work best if it changes the way lawyers do discovery rather than compete with the way lawyers do it now,” said The Beached Consultancy founder Richard Careaga, a former general counsel-turned-computer programmer in Lakewood Ranch, Fla., who is following the developments.

Such aspirations are shared by programmer Mark Kerzner, of Houston, and attorney Ron Chichester, of nearby Tomball, who released version 1.0 early this month of their open-source code base called FreeEed and are now at version 1.2. Their philosophy is that using an open-source approach means anyone can try e-discovery without buying licenses and that the same code can run unchanged whether on a single server or a cloud-based cluster.

“I’ve previously created two e-discovery systems which were closed-source and moderately commercially successful, but open source allows me to follow my ideas on how e-discovery should be done, and I can express my urge to do e-discovery unimpeded. I can also get people to try and eventually use my software much easier compared to closed-source licensed offering, and for a software developer the satisfaction of knowing that people use your software is also a great reward in itself,” Kerzner said. “I do plan to go to both ends of the [Electronic Discovery Reference Model], that is, I am leaving hooks for forensics information, and I would like to add a collection piece, and I am also keen on the advanced text analysis known as predictive coding. All of that is on my roadmap,” he said.

via Open Source Could Change the Future of E-Discovery.

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Super Secret Software Saves a Stolen Laptop | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

June 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Stolen property is not easily found. Fortunately, Joshua Kaufman put a safeguard in place in his laptop that aided police in a search for it. The software led to the arrest of Muthanna Albedashi, a 27-year-old taxi driver, the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting.

The app is called Hidden. It functions by tracking the laptop’s movements through collecting network data and taking photos of the culprit and screenshots of the computer in use.

Kaufman’s laptop was stolen on March 21. He filed a police report with the Oakland Police Deparment that same day, and he began to use Hidden to collect photos and location data. Much to his dismay, there was little progress with his case.

Two months later on May 27, he launched a web campaign, This Guy Has My MacBook, via Tumblr. He updated his tumblelog with photos taken of who he suspected stole the laptop.

One of the images shows Albedashi with his shirt off in bed. Another shows Albedashi asleep on his couch. Kaufman cross-posted his Tumblr to Twitter on May 31 and picked up thousands of hits and tweets.

With the steady increase in popularity of his campaign and calls from several media outlets, Oakland police reopened the case. On May 31, Kaufman was contacted by Officer Holly Joshi that the police were moving forward with his case.

Undercover officers contacted Albedashi’s taxi company and had them arrange a pickup for the suspect. Upon arriving at the location, Albedashi was arrested and the laptop was retrieved.

via Super Secret Software Saves a Stolen Laptop | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

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