23 Apr 13. Spy chiefs warn of increased cyber risks. Online security has moved to the top of both the political and corporate boardroom agendas in the past year, and there are dire warnings about the consequences of ignoring the threats posed by financially motivated criminals, state-sponsored industrial spies and politically motivated “hacktivists”. Many of the most dramatic warnings have come from current and former US and UK security and intelligence officials, who are concerned about the theft of intellectual property (IP) and the impact of cyber-based industrial espionage on business competitiveness. There are also fears of state-sponsored and other attacks on critical infrastructure, such as utilities, banks and hospitals. For example, Leon Panetta, then US secretary of defence, warned last year of the danger of a “cyber Pearl Harbor that would cause physical destruction and the loss of life, an attack that would paralyse and shock the nation and create a profound new sense of vulnerability”. John “Mike” McConnell, a former US intelligence chief, now vice-chairman of Booz Allen Hamilton, echoed the warning, adding the west has had its “9/11 warning” on cyber security and that, unless urgent action is taken, the US faces a “cyber equivalent of the World Trade Center attack” that could bring the country’s banking system, power grid and other essential services to their knees. (Source: FT.com)

24 Apr 13. The computer network on the U.S. Navy’s newest class of coastal warships showed vulnerabilities in Navy cybersecurity tests, but the issues were not severe enough to prevent an eight-month deployment to Singapore, a Navy official said on Tuesday. A Navy team of computer hacking experts found some deficiencies when assigned to try to penetrate the network of the USS Freedom, the lead vessel in the $37bn Littoral Combat Ship program, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Freedom arrived in Singapore last week for an eight-month stay, which its builder, Lockheed Martin Corp., hopes will stimulate Asian demand for the fast, agile and stealthy ships. (Source: FT.com)

23 Apr 13. Cost of cyber attacks triples in a year. The cost of cyber security breaches against British businesses has tripled in the past year as attacks on valuable intellectual property and customer data accelerate. Some 87 per cent of small businesses and 93 per cent of large organisations experienced at least one kind of security breach in the past year, according to a report by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills issued on Tuesday. The cost of security breaches to UK companies amounts to billions of pounds annually and has tripled over the past year, it says. The worst breaches cost small businesses an average of £50,000 and large businesses – those with more than 250 employees – about £650,000. The data also show that the number of repeat breaches has risen by half, with large organisations suffering a median of 113 breaches and small businesses a median of 17. (Source: FT.com)

22 Apr 13. Single view of cyber threat means the world’s largest companies can protect and secure their assets by reducing investigation times by up to 75 per cent. BAE Systems Detica announced the launch of its defence-grade cyber security product, CyberReveal, to the commercial marketplace, for companies to use in-house for the first time. Designed primarily for companies with their own security analysts, CyberReveal is an analytics and investigation product that gives companies the intelligence they need to protect their valuable intellectual property and sensitive commercial information from being stolen or compromised by cyber criminals. Detica’s groundbreaking monitoring technology – built on its forty year heritage of securing the world’s most sensitive government and commercial information – protects against the most sophisticated and advanced cyber threats. Scalable to any organisation, CyberReveal processes billions of data record