Please make sure that your Conference Room is secured.

Story at ComputerWorld...
 

If you aren't aware of the risks of allowing employees to use Social media in your company, here's a good article to read.
At TheRegister

(January 13 & 17, 2012)
An NHS Trust is challenging a large fine imposed by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for violating the Data Protection Act (DPA).  The ICO is proposing to fine the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust US $576,000 after some of its patient records were discovered on hard drives that were being offered for sale on eBay. The Trust had contracted with a contractor to destroy 1,000 hard drives.
While the disks were in the contractor's possession, 232 of them were stolen and offered for sale on eBay.
(Stolen or misappropriated by employees?)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/13/nhs_fined_stolen_data/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-16502602
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/security/nhs-trust-challenges-375000-fine-over-data-protection-breach

This appears to be a classic example in information security of where you can outsource a task but you cannot outsource the responsibility.  As a data controller under the UK Data Protection Act, organisations must take "appropriate technical and organisational measures ... against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data".  This includes that you take the necessary steps to ensure that any third parties, termed under the act as Data Processors, acting on your behalf also take the appropriate "appropriate technical and organisational measures" to secure your data.
 

Microsoft has released a beta version of its Windows Defender antivirus tool that works even when computers are so badly infected that they are unable to fully access the internet.
The program allows users to boot their sick machines off of a CD, DVD or USB flash drive and use the most up-to-date definitions to fight the infection …
Story at TheRegister

The alternative to make sure a computer has been cleaned-off is to re-install Windoze.
BarryZ

A recent Harris Poll shows that cloud computing's lack of security -- or at least its perception -- is making many Americans uneasy about the whole idea. "One of the main issues people have with cloud computing is security. Four in five online Americans (81 percent) agree that they are concerned about securing the service. Only one-quarter (25 percent) say they would trust this service for files with personal information, while three in five (62 percent) would not. Over half (58 percent) disagree with the concept that files stored online are safer than files stored locally on a hard drive and 57 percent of online Americans would not trust that their files are safe online." That's the sobering conclusion from a recent Harris poll conducted between March 1 and 8 among 2,320 adults.

Solution?  Host your stuff locally or at 1USA if you can, then backup using 1USA's encrypted multi-user backup servers.

Modern office copiers can be a security risk. Almost every copier made since 2002 contains a hard drive, which stores a copy of every document the machine scans, prints, copies, or faxes. And if you need proof of just how dangerous this stored information can be, check out the video from CBS News:

Does your organization wipe data from photo-copier hard drives before copiers are decommissioned?

• Internal staff wipe the data.
• Third-party IT or copier technicians wipe the data while the machine is on site.
• Copier dealer or leasing company wipes the data once they reclaim the copier.
• Copier automatically wipes the data with a built-in feature.
• We don't wipe data from copier hard drives.

If your company handles charge cards, double-check your security measures.  Good article.  Link is here.

The registry can be a mysterious and even scary place if you don't understand how it works. If you're an advanced user and want to find out more about all the different registry hives and keys, the different data types, and the different ways of editing the registry, check out Microsoft KB article 256986

Details here.