21 Feb 13. U.S. Ups Ante for Spying on Firms. The White House threatened China and other countries with trade and diplomatic action over corporate espionage as it cataloged more than a dozen cases of cyberattacks and commercial thefts at some of the U.S.’s biggest companies. Top administration officials painted a pervasive portrait of the far-reaching costs of espionage—competitive disadvantages, job losses, product impacts—that American firms as well known as General Motors Co. and DuPont Co. have already had to confront. “There are only two categories of companies affected by trade-secret theft: those that know they’ve been compromised and those that don’t know it yet,” Attorney General Eric Holder said at a White House conference Wednesday. “A hacker in China can acquire source code from a software company in Virginia without leaving his or her desk.” (Source: glstrade.com/WSJ)
20 Feb 13. Chinese Cyberspies Have Hacked Most Washington Institutions, Experts Say. Start asking security experts which powerful Washington institutions have been penetrated by Chinese cyberspies, and this is the usual answer: almost all of them. The list of those hacked in recent years includes law firms, think tanks, news organizations, human rights groups, contractors, congressional offices, embassies and federal agencies. The information compromised by such intrusions, security experts say, would be enough to map how power is exercised in Washington to a remarkably nuanced degree. The only question, they say, is whether the Chinese have the analytical resources to sort through the massive troves of data they steal every day. (Source: glstrade.com/Washington Post)
17 Feb 13. BAE Systems Plc, one of the world’s largest defence, aerospace and security companies, and Vodafone Group Plc. announced the formation of a strategic five-year partnership to provide businesses with a range of advanced communications security products and services, initially focused on smartphones and tablets. Additionally, BAE Systems today announced that it intends to select Vodafone as its preferred supplier of mobile communications worldwide, excluding the US. The formation of the partnership is part of BAE Systems’ continued commitment to grow its cyber and security arm, BAE Systems Detica, in areas such as the communications technology market. For Vodafone, the partnership extends the company’s commitment to provide its global enterprise customers with the most advanced and robust security products and services available. The first commercial element of the strategic partnership between Vodafone and BAE Systems will be a new cloud-based mobile security solution, Vodafone Mobile Threat Manager, to be brought to market in Spring 2013 and initially available to Vodafone’s largest 1,500 global enterprise customers. Vodafone Mobile Threat Manager works across all networks, scanning traffic to and from a company’s mobile devices in order to safeguard against malicious attacks and block inappropriate content, without impacting on device performance. Under the terms of the partnership, BAE Systems will also confirm its intention to select Vodafone as its preferred global supplier of mobile communications, excluding the US. Once appointed, Vodafone will provide services to BAE Systems’ 35,000 UK employees from July 2013, with a view to expanding these services across its global workforce over the term of the contract. Vodafone is additionally discussing the supply of Unified Communications to BAE Systems in the UK. The partnership also provides a framework for both companies to explore a broader range of joint security products for other business areas including interconnected devices using machine to machine (M2M) technology.
21 Feb 13. General Dynamics C4 Systems announced that two new encryptors in the ProtecD@R product family have been certified by the National Security Agency (NSA) to secure information to the Top Secret level and below. The KG-540A (for aircraft)