Sunday, January 16, 2005

 

January ISSA Puget Sound Chapter Meeting

The January ISSA Puget Sound Chapter meeting will be held on Thursday, January 20 from 5:30 to 8:00 PM at Group Health Eastside Hospital in room AA13 (located in the basement). The meeting agenda and driving instructions are as follows:

***iPod door prize this month

Agenda

5:30-6:00 p.m. Food & drinks by ENDFORCE, Inc.

6:00-6:05 p.m. Chapter business, announcements.

6:05-7:00 p.m. Keynote speaker - Pointsec Mobile Technologies Terry Shofner, Pointsec Mobile Technologies, Inc.

Securing the Mobile Enterprise

Mr. Shofner will be discussing the impact today's mobile workforce has on corporate security planning. The increasing amount of data and number of devices within any organization requires prudent management of corporate resources in order to insure sufficient security measures are in place to protect the enterprise and its stakeholders. The core problem is that the majority of mobile devices lack the physical and electronic access controls necessary to maintain security and as a consequence, data stored on mobile devices is much more "at risk" than transmitted data. Mr. Shofner will also be discussing the critical role of endpoint data protection and access controls in relation to compliance issues with some of today's legislation such as California SB1386, SOX, GLBA and HIPPA (April 21, 2005).

7:00-7:10 p.m. Break.

7:10-8:00 p.m.

Guest Speaker - ENDFORCE, Inc. Scott Lewis, Senior Product Manager, ENDFORCE, Inc.

The Endpoint Security Problem & the 'Scan, Block, & Quarantine' Solution

In today's IT shops, critical, high-frequency, enterprise-wide endpoint security patches and upgrades are the norm. Most enterprises dictate endpoint policies; however, with no way to easily enforce compliance, enterprises remain at significant risk. Enterprise administrators are faced with a daunting challenge: ensure that updated anti-virus software, a personal firewall, and all relevant operating system and application patches are successfully installed and running on each device connecting to the network.Historically, this challenge has been an unmanageable problem in networks of tens or hundreds of thousands of LAN and WAN connected devices. As a result, the compliance state of most endpoints pre-connection to the network is essentially unknown and enterprise networks are constantly at risk. Security software and hardware vendors have been addressing this problem through al variety of new products that fall into a category that Gartner refers to as “Scan, Block, and Quarantine”. During his presentation, Scott will review the endpoint enforcement problem and the various solutions to the problem currently available to the enterprise.

8:00 p.m. - ??? Door prizes & Personnel Networking. Door prizes include an iPod being given away by Pointsec. Must be present to win.


Driving Instructions

The ISSA Puget Sound December, 2004 general meeting will be held on December 16, 2004 from 5:30 to 8:00 PM at :

Group Health Eastside Hospital 2700 152nd Ave. N.E. Redmond, WA 98052 Room AA13 (located in the basement, next to cafeteria)

ISSA-PS Website


Wednesday, January 05, 2005

 

"Page Not Available"

Gadgetopia has an article on how some spyware is using an interesting technique to prevent its own removal. Seems that at least one piece of malware is hacking the hosts file to enter dummy addresses for the most popular spyware removal sites, such as Lavasoft or Ad-Aware. This causes all requests to access the sites to go into a black hole. Yet another thing to check when disinfecting a system.

Monday, January 03, 2005

 

WSA Security SIG January Meeting

The WSA Security SIG has finally released information for their January meeting. Although they normally meet on the first Monday of the month, this will be on a Thursday, January 6.

Flash: Although the information posted on the WSA web site continues to talk about an non-security related topic for the meeting, the information below is more likely to be correct:

Topic:
"The Revolution in Manufacturing Quality - What can we learn?" Malicious Code: Trends and Techniques

When:
1/6/05, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Speaker:
Tom Ervin, Lead Information Security Engineer, Federal Bureau of Investigations Cyber Division

Detail:
Learn from an FBI subject matter expert about the evolving nature of malicious code and what we are likely to see in 2005 based on observed trends. Gain insights about how you and your organization can better protect themselves against these enormously costly outbreaks.

Location:
Seattle University, Engineering Building, Room #400. (4th floor, East end of hallway)

Map: http://www.seattleu.edu/home/campus_community/visit_campus/directions_area_maps/driving_to_main_campus/

Cost:
Free for WSA Members and employees of member companies, $15 for non-members.

Registration:
To reserve your seat, go to: http://www.wsa.org/events/ (Registration link not available as of mid-afternoon on Monday 1/3. Please check later today.)