26 Sep 12. LM Names Verizon its Newest Cyber Security Alliance Member. Verizon is the newest member of the Lockheed Martin Cyber Security
Alliance, a group of leading companies in the security industry dedicated to collaborating to address the growing threat posed by cyber attacks against the country’s critical IT infrastructure. The Lockheed Martin Cyber Security Alliance brings together the cyber security capabilities and technologies from market leading companies in a collaborative environment that integrates best practices, hardware, software, and tools within a research and development facility, the NexGen Cyber Innovation and Technology Center. The Center fosters an agile environment where alliance members and customers work together to innovate and pilot programs to address cyber security challenges, including early threat detection, data protection, and multi-layer self-healing capabilities. Both Lockheed Martin and Verizon will apply their respective intelligence-driven threat detection and defense methodologies to various projects undertaken by the Lockheed Martin Cyber Security Alliance. In addition, Verizon will contribute insights gained through the”Verizon 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report”. Now in its fifth year of publication, this year’s edition analyzes 855 data breaches involving more than 174 million compromised records – the second-highest data loss that Verizon has seen since it began collecting data in 2004. (Source: ASD Network)
25 Sep 12. Iran is prepared to defend itself in case of a “cyber war”
which could cause more harm than a physical confrontation, a commander in the country’s Revolutionary Guards said. The Islamic Republic has tightened cyber security since its uranium enrichment centrifuges were hit in 2010 by the Stuxnet computer worm, which it believes came from Israel or the United States.
“We have armed ourselves with new tools, because a cyber war is more dangerous than a physical war,” said Abdollah Araqi, deputy commander of ground forces in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA).
Israel has threatened to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites if diplomatic efforts fail to stop the nuclear work it believes is aimed at getting weapons capability, a charge Tehran denies. Many analysts are skeptical that airstrikes could completely destroy Iran’s nuclear projects and that cyber attacks like Stuxnet might be more effective. Iran detected a computer virus in April inside the control systems of Kharg Island – which handles the vast majority of its crude oil exports – but the terminal remained operational. Tehran is working towards developing a national Internet, saying that would improve cyber security. But many Iranians believe the plan is the latest way to control their access to the web, already highly censored. Iran denied on Sunday that its hackers attacked U.S. banks, following a Reuters report that three of the largest American lenders were repeatedly targeted over the past year. (Source: Reuters)
20 Sep 12. Privately-owned computer networks remain vulnerable to cyber attacks, and many U.S. companies are not doing enough to protect them, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said. Attacks on American computer infrastructure by other countries and criminal gangs have soared in recent years, according to U.S. government officials. Efforts to pass legislation to strengthen U.S. cyber security have met obstacles such as privacy issues, prompting the White House to consider an executive order to protect U.S. computer networks from attack. Carter said the Pentagon was doing all it could to protect its own networks and develop offensive cyber weapons, but shoring up the nation’s overall cyber infrastructure — much of which is privately held — was far more challenging. (Source: Reuters)
20 Sep 12. Carter Urges Stepped Up Progress on Cyber Defense. Even as the Defense Department increases investments in cyber capabilities, o