Posts Tagged ‘InterComputer IOS’


ON-LINE BANKING SECURITY – HOW MANY FACTORS ARE ENOUGH?

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

On-line banking security is increasingly the subject of news reports of various types of cybercrime, usually involving electronic identity theft and the illegal transfer or diversion of funds from the victim’s bank account. As the problem grows in size, legal challenges are increasingly attempting to hold banks liable for losses from such crimes. Banks are, of course, very reluctant to accept such liabilities and are battling the problem with both legal and technological strategies.

Typically, banks are offering “two-factor authentication” as a de facto industry standard for on-line banking security. The following video, provided by ZD Net, clearly explains what two-factor security is and how it works:

The problem with two-factor security is that hackers have now discovered how to defeat it in real-time. The following article from the MIT Technology Review details an actual case where a construction company lost almost half a million dollars to such an attack:

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23488/?a=f

The authentication of a customer’s electronic identity and the correct application of the customer’s authority limits are the very reasons for on-line banking security. If either objective is not reached, the system has failed and the results can be disastrous.

InterComputer’s fully-insured InterOperating System (IOS) begins with a three-factor approach adding something the user is (a biometric measurement) in addition to something he knows and something he has. This approach, combined with many other design, architectural and procedural factors, combine to create an electronic “trusted path” and result in InterComputer’s IOS being the only underwritten electronic transaction system commercially available today.

To learn more about InterComputer’s Trusted Banking solution, click here.

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Posted in Banking Industry, Computer Crime | No Comments »


ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORD SECURITY – HUGE CARROT, HUGE STICK

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies face intense pressure to electronify medical information and health histories. This pressure is comprised of both a very big stick and a very big carrot.

The stick comes in the form of proliferating state and Federal laws mandating the safekeeping of electronic medical records (EMR). Last year, the hospital that treated the mother and babies in the famous “Octomom” case was unable to prevent unauthorized access to their medical records by the hospital’s own employees. California regulators fined the Kaiser Permanente hospital in Bellflower a total of $437,500 for failure to prevent just two instances of unauthorized access. Other prominent institutions, such as UCLA Medical Center, have suffered newsworthy failures to protect EMR information in the cases of Farah Fawcett, Britney Spears, Maris Shriver, and others. In addition to the financial damage such failures incur, hospitals are deeply concerned about the effects of adverse publicity on their reputation and about incurring big expenses in related legal actions.

The carrot comes in the form of a huge Federal earmark for $19 billion in stimulus money to incent the development and implementation of electronic medical records (EMR) technology.

InterComputer is working within the health care industry to address two major market requirements:

1. The need to control access to EMR in compliance with applicable Federal and state laws
2. The need to securely communicate and exchange documents among hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies

The InterComputer InterOperating System (IOS) is fully compatible with all major EMR solutions and applications and fully insured against loss due to cybercrime of any kind within the system. Its advanced user identity, authority delegation management, and secure messaging technologies, can absolutely prevent the kind of incidents that have proved so costly to Kaiser’s bottom line. IOS also delivers automated compliance with both HIPAA and SarbOx regulatory requirements.

To learn more about InterComputer’s EMR capability, click here.

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Posted in Electronic Medical Records | No Comments »


MASSIVE CYBER ATTACK SHOCKS 2500 COMPANIES

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Last month, engineers discovered a massive, long term, global cyber attack that has successfully breached more than 75,000 computer systems at nearly 2,500 companies in nearly 200 countries. Amit Yoran, chief executive of NetWitness (the company that first detected the attack) said, “The attack also highlights the inability of the private sector — including industries that would be expected to employ the most sophisticated cyber defenses — to protect itself…The traditional security approaches of intrusion-detection systems and anti-virus software are by definition inadequate for these types of sophisticated threats…The things that we — industry — have been doing for the past 20 years are ineffective with attacks like this. That’s the story.”

Run by an eastern European criminal group, the attack (dubbed the “Kneber bot”) began in 2008 and successfully targeted “proprietary corporate data, e-mails, credit-card transaction data and login credentials at companies in the health and technology industries”.

The Kneber bot commandeers users’ computers, scrapes them for login credentials and passwords — including to online banking and social networking sites — and then exploits that data to hack into the systems of other users. It has the ability to target any information the attackers want, including file-sharing sites for sensitive corporate documents.

Stories of successful cyber attacks are no longer novel, but this story is remarkable for two reasons: the long term, large-scale nature of the attacks and the presumed sophistication of the targets’ cyber defenses.

InterComputer’s insured Interoperating System (IOS) is structurally immune to attacks like the Kneber bot. It provides an “end-to-end trusted path” for electronic messages and payments that is impossible to achieve by cobbling together products from various vendors. While InterComputer is not in the business of securing computers and networks, the IOS is not a potential point of entry for any attack like the Kneber bot. All messages sent or received within the IOS are fully insured against cybercrime of any kind, including any attack like the Kneber bot. To learn more about the IOS, click here.

Details of the attack and its implications are available at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021705816_pf.html

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Posted in Computer Crime | No Comments »