Identity Features

Despite a sluggish US economy, online shopping continues to show impressive revenue gains. Recent Forrester Research data suggests that online shopping will grow 17 percent in 2008, a far cry from what is happening in the brick-and-mortar world. Social networking sites are a security minefield, so we have created some exercises to test for vulnerabilities. The questions of "who" and "why" in identity theft remain largely ignored. That is, "Who is after online identities? And what for?" As long as there has been credit granting there have been customers committing first party fraud. We need an identity framework that combines strong authentication with anonymity. The public's idea of confidentiality is not compatible with the way their details are handled. One of the main reasons why people are resisting Internet banking is due to concerns around IT security. A new type of threat has emerged that poses a significant risk to businesses - this threat is real. There are examples of it in the news. There are security experts who are warning against the risk. So why are most companies ignoring it? ITIL speaks to a broad range of IT disciplines, including incident, problem, change, release, and configuration management, as well as IT service continuity and security management.

Responsibility for spotting identity fraud should rest with business, says Bruce Schneier. A survey of privacy managers at an Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG) event in January revealed that more than two-thirds are seeing moderate to material increases in external scrutiny - with almost half reporting material increases. Despite the recent TJX security breach, it is natural to conclude that companies will continue to ignore the seething vulnerabilities that lead to massive thefts of sensitive information. Just like the detectives do on weekly television crime dramas, put yourself in the mind of the bad guy. Pretend that you're the criminal who brokers stolen personal information with organised crime syndicates overseas. Put yourself behind the eyes of the malicious hacker who plans to breach merchant networks and compromise wholesale volumes of consumer payment card information, the kind of information that can be bartered within the internet's dark underbelly. Every week brings another public announcement on some dramatic compromise of confidential, sensitive information. Sometimes, it's the loss, or theft, of a computer or hard drive or the hacking of supposedly confidential files containing individuals' private, identifying data, such as credit-card numbers or health records. In one of our features this month, "2006: Year of exposed IDs," we discuss the various breaches that have plagued businesses of all sizes over the last year. As our edition went to press, still other incidents cropped up.