ARC Training Completes Three Major Consultancy Projects in First Half of 2007

Since adding a consultancy capability to its services at the beginning of 2007, ARC Training has successfully completed three major consultancy projects:

- A comprehensive review of security plans and procedures, Board briefings and awareness training for a major Middle East LNG supplier, exporting to international markets all over the world

- A security review of the strategic oil reserve storage site for an EU member country

- Writing security policies and procedures for one of the world’s best known pharmaceuticals

If you have a requirement for security consultancy of any kind, David will be happy to assist with finding the appropriately-skilled consultant.

Is There a Spy in Your Blackberry? Servers in the UK May Be Tapped, Warns Evening Standard

Servers for BlackBerry in the UK may be being tapped into, in order to steal information from private handsets, according to the London Evening Standard.

France's national security services have warned that the wireless devices can be intercepted and have banned their use in the president's and prime minister's offices, and they are reported to have advised all government officials working in sensitive offices not to use Blackberry devices because "they use overseas servers, opening up an espionage risk."

The security services said BlackBerry's servers in this country and in the US can be used to gather state secrets. French oil company Total also warns staff from using a BlackBerry for "security reasons".

The insecurity of Blackberry servers was raised at the recent ASIS Advanced Physical Security Applications and Technology workshop in California, at which a US Secret Service delegate admitted that his organisation's Blackberry sets are still in boxes, awaiting back-shipping to the supplier due to unresolved data security vunlerabilities.

For more on these stories follow these links:

http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/david_lacey/2007/06/blackberrys-discouraged-by-fre-1.html

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23401343-details/Is+there+a+spy+in+your+BlackBerry+Servers+in+UK+may+be+tapped/article.do

Ideas to Help You Design Your Own Security Posters

Need some ideas to help you develop some security posters? Try starting here:

http://www.noticebored.com/html/nov_06_posters.html

Useful Resource for Your Information Security Awareness Briefings

Thinking about conducting an in-house information security awareness seminar? Scare the pants off the iPod users by using some of the warnings put out in this presentation:

www.fast.org.uk/groups/POINTSECPRESINTERNALTHREATS.pdf

Getting Security Buy-In from the Business - Security Force Multiplying

One of our valued customers, a world-leading energy company, has been running a five day course attended by 25 business managers in which they learned the basics of both international and company best security practice.

The company’s security philosophy is to use a small number of highly qualified security professionals backed by a wide network of business managers and supervisors who act as local focal points for security issues.

The Regional Security Advisor for the client said “There people are our force multipliers - they keep an eye on local conditions, fix whatever they can and call us of they can not. In the event of a local crisis or incident, they become our local eyes and ears."

The group received training in risk management; security design; physical and electronic security and information security. This was combined with input from the parent company to present the specific corporate view. One delegate said “It has been really worthwhile – I return to work far better equipped to watch the security at my location.

China Breaks up $500 Million Piracy Ring

Pirated software worth more than $500 million (£242 million) has been seized by authorities in China as part of a joint operation run by Chinese police and the FBI. The syndicates targeted by the raids in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong are believed to have distributed more than $2 billion (£968 million) worth of counterfeit software to countries around the world, including the UK.

Chinese police arrested 25 people and shut down six manufacturing and retail facilities as part of the operation, which was described by officials in China as "an unprecedented co-operative effort" with the FBI. More than 290,000 counterfeit software CDs were seized by the Chinese Public Security Bureau (PSB), including 47,000 which contained fake Microsoft products, such as the Windows Vista operating system and the Office suite.

As many as a third of UK businesses were unaware they were running counterfeit software in their organisation, Microsoft said.

Managing the Risk of Counterfeiting is one of the many subjects addressed in Security Management Stage 3, 24th Sep - 5th October. Contact Janet for details.

Security Experts Claim First iPhone Hack

In what appears to be the first successful hack of Apple's iPhone, according to the Times Online, a group of security experts have shown how to take control of the device remotely using its internet connection.

The researchers at Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) demonstrated that by tricking the phone into accessing a particular website, or by using a rogue wi-fi connection, hackers could force the phone to forward on personal information, such as text messages and contact numbers.

By installing a piece of malicious code in the iPhone via its Safari internet browser, a hacker could take "complete control" of the device, Charles Miller, principal security analyst at ISE, said.