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Will IE6 be the next NT4?

1st October 2009 All penetration testers will remember the long tail of Windows NT 4.0, and how this operating system continued to be used long past the point when security updates stopped at the end of 2004. For many years the presence of an unpatchable NT4 server was a common issue in a penetration test report, and it is only now, almost five years after security support ended, that finding an NT4 system on a network is becoming a rare event. Read More

One in four web applications susceptible to high risk security flaws

7th September 2009 NTA Monitor has reported a 10% increase in the total number of web applications found to have at least one high-risk security issue... Read More

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The Return of the Insider Threat

1st July 2009 When NTA started security testing twelve years ago, the main focus was on the insider threat. There were many reports with statistics showing that most security breaches were due to insiders. By contrast there was very little focus on the external threat via Internet and third-party network links. Back then many companies did not even have a firewall. Read More

Finance industry faces serious IT security issues

The finance industry needs to keep its eye on the small change as well as the bigger picture of its security vulnerabilities, if it is to avoid the potential for hackers to gain unauthorised system access and disrupt service availability, according to NTA Monitor's 2008 Annual Security Report. The report shows that, on the whole, the finance industry has made no overall improvement in its vulnerability level since the previous year and ranked the fourth worst of the 10 sectors tested. Although five of the 10 sectors tested avoided high risk vulnerabilities, the finance industry did not.

NTA Monitor's Annual Security Report analyses data from external Internet vulnerability tests conducted for worldwide organisations across a wide range of industry sectors, including charities, education, government, IT, law, retail and finance. .

Roy Hills, Technical Director at NTA Monitor, says: "If a financial institution has a security problem, the repercussions are potentially severe for the organisation itself as well as the companies and customers it deals with. It is vital that the finance industry considers IT security as an integral part of its business."

NTA Monitor can advise companies on the specific issues that need addressing, but also has generic advice on how organisations can get their house in order:

Apply patches and updates as soon as they become available to address the latest vulnerabilities
Ensure that preventative action is an ongoing process
Educate and make it a commitment for all staff, to be aware of Internet security issues
Update the security policy regularly and ensure that it is publicised and communicated.

A copy of the NTA Monitor Annual Security Report 2008 is available on request from NTA Monitor, email marketing@nta-monitor.com

This article was first released on: 23rd June 2008