Bloor Security Blog

Welcome to the Bloor Security Blog blog on IT-Director.com. Simply click on one of the links from the list below, or delve into the Archives for older material.

Recent Blog Posts

Getting ahead in the cloud
Cloud-based computing is growing faster than the IT sector as a whole. There are plenty of analysts throwing numbers about regarding cloud spending. Here are some from Forrester Research: in 2011, US$40.7 billion was spent on public, private and...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 30th January '12

Migrating to Exchange 2010 and email archiving options
According to recent research, Microsoft Exchange accounts for 65% of email servers in use in organisations today. Many of these are deployments of Exchange 2003, for which Microsoft no longer offers support, and Exchange 2007. According to the...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 7th November '11

Best practices for email archiving
Given the amount of business information that is contained in the multitude of emails received and sent every day and the need to preserve business records and correspondence for regulatory compliance and governance purposes, as well as for dealing...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 3rd October '11

What did IPv6 Day prove?
IPv6 Day came and went without much fanfare. That is because, according to participants, it worked. True, there were a few problems encountered, but no more than expected and that was one of the main points of the exercise anyway. According to...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 30th August '11

The security challenges of modern data centres
To reduce complexity, a high proportion of organisations are looking at modernising their data centre infrastructure through consolidation, virtualisation and by leveraging the cloud. In traditional data centres, security controls can be applied to...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 29th August '11

Whitelisting and change control for improving integrity
Today's security threats are complex and sophisticated and are getting ever harder to defend against. Attackers use multiple methods and vectors to try to bury deep into networks and are increasingly looking for longer term gain, rather than just a...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 16th August '11

IPv6 Day
The internet protocol (IP) is the primary communications protocol for determining how data packets are routed around the internet and is responsible for the addressing system that ensures traffic is routed to the intended destination. The current...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 13th June '11

Secure Systems Development Conference - A Must See!
On Thursday 19th May 2011 I will be speaking at The 2nd International Secure Systems Development Conference in London on the subject of smartphone security, entitled I own your smart phone (and of course your private life and your business life) But...
Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research | 27th April '11

BBC Interviews Nigel Stanley on Phone Hacking
Another phone hacking story went live last week here  This was a package we had recorded a couple of weeks ago and it was scheduled for release during InfoSec 2011 week - as if that week wasn't going to be busy enough!The video demonstrates just how...
Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research | 26th April '11

BBC Story on Bloor Research into Jihadists use of Smartphones
An interesting story from the BBC based on some research I have been doing with Nico Prucha based at the University of Vienna. We found jihadists were compiling packages of information designed to be received on smartphones. They contained copies of...
Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research | 26th April '11

DDoS attacks: coming to a network near you
There has already been much fallout from the recent massive release of information by the WikiLeaks organisation—including attacks on WikiLeaks itself by those angered by its actions and aiming to disrupt and discredit the organisation. This...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 24th February '11

Web security in an always-on world
My habits are not dissimilar to those of many others. In the morning, my first act is to collect my phone from beside the bed, check my email accounts and then look to see who has posted what on Facebook and Twitter. All these services are based in...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 17th February '11

Critical infrastructure under attack
Critical infrastructure is a term that is used to describe assets and facilities that are essential for the functioning of society and the economy. It encompasses a wide range of vital assets, including utilities and communications networks, food...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 14th February '11

Charting the vendor landscape for web and email security
Today's threat landscape is complex. Hackers no longer lust for fame, rather looking for ways to make their fortune. Simple exploits, such as a malicious email sent en masse, are no longer effective. This means that they have turned their hands to...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 4th February '11

Webinar on developing a user-centric approach to cloud security
From a user perspective, the term cloud refers to applications and services that are accessed via a browser, with no software or other agents needed to be installed on the device used to access them. From a provider perspective, there are many...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 17th January '11

Securing retail environments from the insider threat
The retail industry is one that operates under tight profit margins and the recent economic slowdown has seen those margins put under even greater pressure, with many retail chains reporting that the outlook for consumer spending still remains...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 20th December '10

Anti-virus alone is a poor strategy
Computer viruses and other malware such as worms, trojans and spyware, are rife and can cause tremendous damage to systems that become infected. Because of this, anti-virus (AV) technology is one of the most commonly deployed security controls used...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 26th November '10

Securing the internet's infrastructure
DNS stands for the domain name system of the internet. It works like a directory--rather like a phone book--that allows computer-generated addresses to be translated into words that humans can understand. This makes navigation of the internet a far...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 15th October '10

Email archiving in the cloud webinar
Emails are essential business records and today form the bulk of much of the communications an organisation has internally and with business partners and customers. They, along with their attachments, can contain a goldmine of information and it is...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 16th September '10

The next-generation secure internet
The internet was designed to be easy to use. As its use expanded rapidly, what was needed was a scalable system for associating an internet host's name with its IP address. Therefore, the domain name system (DNS) was developed. DNS is sometimes...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 7th September '10

When the cloud improves security
Once considered a dirty word, no one today would doubt the importance of security. A decade ago, the world had a shock when the ILOVEYOU worm was unleashed by email, infecting an estimated 10% of computers worldwide. As such exploits became more...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 1st September '10

Leveraging the cloud for more effective email archiving
Today, email is the primary means of communication for any organisation and emails and their attachments can contain a goldmine of information, such as contract details, hiring and compensation decisions, and merger and acquisition discussions. The...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 2nd July '10

Call for participants for cloud security survey
Is your organisation involved in a cloud or SaaS project? Bloor Research is currently undertaking a survey that aims to discover how organisations see the security issues of cloud-based or SaaS computing and how they are handling them. If you have...
Fran Howarth, Bloor Research | 18th June '10

Building Security In Maturity Model gets an Update
Today we saw an updated release of the Building Security In Maturity Model (BSIMM) study, which significantly expands the data defining benchmarks for successfully developing and growing an enterprise-wide software security initiative.Launched in...
Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research | 17th May '10