October 12, 2004

Online Security News You Can Use

It can be very difficult to keep up with the latest security news that affects your business. There's the stream of information related to Microsoft products, information about viruses in general and information about other vendor's products.

To help ease the burden of keeping up to do with so many security threats, WatchGuard's LIveSecurity Service has been issuing hundreds of broadcast since its inception in 1999. Today is the 1000th broadcast.

Comparison of early and recent LiveSecurity broadcasts reveals that five core principles for managing security are as relevant and important today as they were five years ago: have a security policy in place; conduct regular anti-virus updates; ensure a firewall is in place; patch diligently; and observe 'hardening' principles (removing default settings and unnecessary features when installing commercial applications to avoid security flaws and foil hackers).

LiveSecurity's Foundations series is designed to help new IT administrators get up to speed on network security with straightforward explanations of topics such as "What are buffer overflows?" and "Cryptography 101." Responses to a 2004 survey of LiveSecurity subscribers revealed that one in six gets more of their security knowledge from the LiveSecurity Service than any other source, and that more respondents rely on LiveSecurity to meet their training needs than other sources such as college qualifications, seminars or peer advice.

"Our customers tell us that LiveSecurity helps them prioritize threats, recognize and act on attacks, better inform their users and formulate policies to protect them in the long-term," said Scott Turnbaugh, vice president of sales and marketing at Continental Technologies, a WatchGuard solution provider partner since 1998. "WatchGuard is dedicated to increasing knowledge about security issues so growing businesses know what to do when facing an emerging threat, and how to evaluate the security implications of a new technology investment, policy or business decision."

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