Security in the News Senate

Security in the News

Senate Intelligence Panel is investigating the aggressive expansion of two Chinese telecommunications conglomerates who are seeking to gain greater infrastructure-level projects in the U.S. And surrounding territories. The two companies are Huawei Technologies Co. And ZTE Corporation. What is causing concern in Congress is the fact that Huawei was founded in 1988 by a former member of the Chinese military, Ren Zhengfei. He was instrumental in the Chinese army's investment in next generation technologies and ran their R&D operations for a period of time as deputy director of the Science Research Institute of the Engineering Army Corps. While the company insists his connection to the Chinese military is no longer active, there is no actual proof this is the case. The potential for Huawei and ZTE to eavesdrop and disrupt the American telecommunications networks is real according to the U.S. Senate studies and investigations. As a result the potential for Huawei Technologies to gain market share and more influence over American infrastructure will be severely limited as they pose a security threat to many of the core systems that keep the country running.

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-17/house-intelligence-panel-probing-chinese-phone-companies-in-u-s-.html

STEP 2: REPLY TO ARTICLE

Telecommuting is increasingly being adopted by higher-level employees which is putting confidential, highly valuable data at risk over unsecured networks they rely on while working at home or remotely. The challenges of ensuring data and application security is significant and growing for companies who have their senior or high-level employees working remotely or at home. Clearly there is a need for standards and best practices in remote access and telecommuting access. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) took the initiative and define a series of data security guidelines for their telecommuting employees last month. This is an excellent example of what companies need to take the initiative and complete on their own as well. As hackers and those that seek to break into enterprise networks become more advanced and sophisticated in their approaches to gaining access to highly valuable data, IT security standards need to make a corresponding increase in depth and breadth of deterrents. The bottom line is that remote workers and telecommuting is the new battlefield of corporate IT security. Only by creating a flexible enough series of guidelines that can flex to the needs of workers while staying agile enough to respond to changing threats can organizations hope to stay ahead of the many threats to their information assets.

STEP 3: SECURITY RISK: SIRI

Apple is renowned for their rapid pace of innovation and the continual pursuit of the perfect user experience on their many devices including their best-selling iPhone series. The latest iPhone 4S has added a voice-activated agent called SIRI which can easily complete complex tasks, which has also created a major security threat for its users as well. Industry experts have been able to bypass the security on the new SIRI feature and gain access to confidential data. Being able to gain access to debit and credit card information, Virtual Private Network (VPN) access specifics including logins and passwords to enterprise networks, in addition to the location of the owner, all are serious enough to warrant more effective layering of security features in the Apple iPhone 4S. Apple has always strove to create devices that get the roadblocks out of the way for users, yet in this instance they have streamlined the security too thin.