Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Daily Report

• According to the Daily Mail, in the wake of a U.S. intelligence report citing fears that terrorists are trying to acquire material to make a dirty bomb, nine items that could be usedfor such ends are missing from British hospitals (See item 6)

• The Associated Press reports that a suspected pipe bomb exploded at a federal courthouse in downtown San Diego early Sunday, damaging the front entrance. (See item 28)

Information Technology

33. May 5, Information Security – (National) Security pros focused on internal threat, training. Organizations are shifting their focus to the threat posed by insiders and turning their attention to training and data protection, according to a recently released survey. The 2008 Global Information Security Workforce Study, conducted by analyst firm Frost and Sullivan for certification organization (ISC)2, surveyed 7,548 information security professionals worldwide. Fifty-one percent of respondents said internal employees pose the biggest threat to their organizations. The finding represents an ongoing trend in the past two to three years, as the numbers of remote workers and portable storage devices have jumped in the enterprise, said Frost & Sullivan’s network security industry manager. “That increases the chance of something happening, whether it’s malicious employees or just someone with good intentions but walks out of the building with data so they can work at home,” he said. The findings are supported by Information Security’s Priorities 2008 survey, in which 70 percent of participants said they are worried about detecting and thwarting internal attacks. Source: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1312272,00.html?track=sy160&asrc=RSS_RSS-10_160#

Communications Sector

34. May 4, Sydney Morning Herald – (International) Sydney network hit by vandals. About 5000 western Sydney homes and businesses remain without phone, internet and cable television services after vandals cut a Telstra communications cable. A team of 30 technicians worked throughout the night to restore services for Telstra customers in the Blacktown area after vandals severed two fiber optic cables about 8am (AEST) on Saturday, said a Telstra spokesman. “We’ve managed to splice some optic fibers this morning, getting about half of the customers back online but there are still thousands of customers without services like phones, Foxtel, internet, businesses without Eftpos and several base stations are still not working for mobiles,” he said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done and we’d certainly be hoping to get that finished by the end of today, but it might be a tall order.” He said 1300 home phones were still out of service. “We’re really angry about this, this is wanton destruction of property which is obviously of major importance to the community and it’s put a lot of people out over the weekend, including a lot of businesses.”
Source:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/05/04/1209839430173.html