Mobile Device Security Improvements Needed

Organizations need to become better at improving mobile device security, a leading security consultancy says.

Symantec's annual State of Security Survey said that improving the security of mobile devices and other network endpoints was a crucial step in the continued fight against devastating cyber attacks.

The recommendation came as Symantec's survey of 3,300 companies in 36 countries revealed that cybersecurity is organizations' top security concern - ahead of natural disaster and financial loss.

Symantec's survey revealed that although 71 per cent of organisations reported fewer cyber attacks against their systems and networks than a year ago - reflecting the growing investment in staff and systems to improve security - no fewer than 41 per cent said that it was a more important issue than 12 months ago.

A key reason for this, Symantec said, was the growth of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet devices connected to organizations' networks. the company said 47 per cent of the companies surveyed believed mobile device security "was affecting the difficulty of providing cybersecurity". Social media (46 per cent) and the "consumerization of IT" (45 per cent) were other worries.

Symantec said the concerns over mobile device security reflect the fact that it needs to be improved. The company said improving network security to protect mobile devices should be a key consideration for organizations It departments -

"Proactively encrypting endpoints will...help organizations minimize the consequences" of being open to a cyber attack, said the company. "Businesses need to protect information proactively by taking an information-centric approach to protect both information and interactions," said the company. Taking a content-aware approach to protecting information is key in identifying and classifying confidential, sensitive information, knowing where it resides, who has access to it, and how it is coming in or leaving your organization."

It added: "To help control access, IT administrators need to validate and protect the identities of users, sites and devices throughout their organizations. Furthermore, they need to provide trusted connections and authenticate transactions where appropriate. Organizations need to manage systems by implementing secure operating environments, distributing and enforcing patch levels, automating processes to streamline efficiency, and monitoring and reporting on system status."

Image courtesy WikiKiwi/Wikimedia Commons.

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New 9/11 Twin Towers Collapse Theory Presented

A combination of heated-up aircraft components and water could have caused the Twin Towers to collapse on 9/11, according to the latest theory put forward.

Immediately prior to the loss of the World Trade Centre's towers in New York, those present in the area reported hearing powerful noise surge from within. These, says SINTEF's Doctor Christian Simensen, might be the greatest clue to why the towers fell in the way they did.

Doctor Simensen, representing Scandinavia's most eminent independent research group, presented his views at a materials technology event held in San Diego, California.

Previous twin towers collapse theories have followed a different chain of events, suggesting that the impact of the two aircraft caused a structural heat overload to the buildings themselves. Simensen thinks a chemical reaction occurred when parts of the airliners met with water cascading from the buildings' in-built sprinklers.

That reaction's borne out by findings from earlier incidents, as detailed in a piece published by Aluminium International Today.

The attack on the Twin Towers claimed the lives of close to 3,000 people, when insurgents working for Al Qaeda took over a pair of commercial airliners and directed them towards the New York skyline. Even though the movement of each aircraft, through the walls of WTC1 and WTC2, produced huge swells of flame and swathes of smoke, observers were still surprised when the structures came tumbling down.

"Both scientific experiments and 250 reported disasters suffered by the aluminium industry have shown that the combination of molten aluminium and water releases enormous explosions", Simensen explained, in his new 9/11 towers theory ."I regard it as extremely likely that it was these explosions that made the skyscrapers collapse by tearing out part of the internal structure, and that this caused the uppermost floors of the buildings to fall and crush the lower parts.

"In other words, I believe that these were the explosions that were heard by people in the vicinity and that have since given life to the conspiracy theories that explosives had been placed in the skyscrapers."

Earlier this month, the world marked 9/11's tenth anniversary. Just days before, security was boosted in the major US cities, in response to a reported 2011 US terror threat.

Image copyright US Navy

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Hard Radiation Detection Material Research

US-based scientists have developed a new gamma radiation detection method that could launch the next generation of nuclear weapons identification systems.

Working at Illinois' Northwestern University, the research team has created new elemental materials capable of confirming the presence of so-called ‘hard radiation' - high energy gamma rays or X-rays that can penetrate comparatively thick substances. It's precisely that ability that normally makes this type of radiation difficult to pick up on but hopes are high that the university's advances could have future security applications in the modern world.

"We have designed promising semiconductor materials that, once optimised, could be a fast, effective and inexpensive method for detecting dangerous materials such as plutonium and uranium", head researcher Mercouri G Kanatzidis explained, in a statement.

He and his colleagues initially drew on heavy elements with a comparatively high radiation absorption level to put their hard radiation detection technique to test. When heavy radiation entered these elements, it activated the electrons inside. This activity generated a signal which both confirmed the radiation's presence and allowed its identity to be confirmed.

However, the team encountered one issue during their experiments - how to distinguish between the electrons in the radiation and those naturally found in the elements. As detailed by Kanatzidis, to overcome this, they ended up actually manufacturing their own material.

"It's like having a bucket of water and adding one drop - the change is negligible", he said. "We needed a heavy element material without a lot of electrons. This doesn't exist naturally so we had to design a new material."

Consequently, the researchers developed two substances - cesium-mercury-selenide and cesium-mercury-sulfide - and subsequently showed that both of them could effectively detect gamma rays. According to Kanatzidis, once further radiation detection materials research has taken place - optimising the materials so they're working at their best - they have the potential to offer greater performance than present-day hard radiation detection produces.

The materials have clear security industry applications but other industries, such as biomedicine, might also be able to put them to use.

Northwestern University's hard radiation detection research was supported by two US government organisations - the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. In-depth details of their work appear in a paper called Dimensional Reduction: A Design Tool for New Radiation Detection Materials.

Image copyright Irvin Calicut at ml.wikipedia

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Terahertz Sensing for Bomb Detection

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Laser Explosives Detection System Unveiled

A laser capable of accurate roadside bomb detection has been developed by a US-based research team.

The technology can precisely locate IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) of the kind historically deployed by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and part of the investment require to progress it was supplied by the US Department of Homeland Security.

Working at Michigan State University, the researchers describe, in a study published by Applied Physics Letters, how IEDs claim close to two thirds of the deaths that occur among warfighters serving on the frontline in Afghanistan.

Traditional IED detection approaches are complicated by the difficulty factor involved in locating bombs by their chemical signature when, in Afghanistan, there are already large numbers of chemicals floating around: how do you isolate potentially hazardous material from what's already in the environment?

The laser in this system fires two different types of beams and uses the results from these to determine the type of material being analysed. The shorter pulses cause explosive molecules to vibrate, giving away their presence, while the longer pulses are used to indicate what the molecules actually are, determining their identity from the frequency of their vibrations.

According to head researcher Professor Marcos Dantus, the new laser-based IED detection system is so accurate that it can pick up one billionth of a gram of explosive material.

"The laser and the method we've developed were originally intended for microscopes, but we were able to adapt and broaden its use to demonstrate its effectiveness for standoff detection of explosives", Professor Dantus explained.

In addition to being able to perform high precision-level explosives scans, the laser can also cover a wide target area.

From here on in, the researchers are hoping to see further investment into their technology. If that occurs, it's conceivable that the laser IED detection system could see operational use in the not-too-distant future. More on this to come in future Security Technology News Items.

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