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From Bankers Online…

Security experts have long touted the need for financial Web sites to move beyond mere passwords and implement so-called “two-factor authentication” – the second factor being something the user has in their physical possession like an access card – as the answer to protecting customers from phishing attacks that use phony e-mails and bogus Web sites to trick users into forking over their personal and financial data.

All of us at Garland Heart would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and would like to thank our clients for their support during this very busy and productive 2015 year.

EEye Digital Security has released a temporary patch for a zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer that is being used by malicious Web sites to install spyware on users’ computers, officials said Tuesday. The eEye patch is meant as a placeholder until Microsoft Corp. releases a permanent fix, which is expected by April 11, Marc Maiffret, co-founder and chief hacking officer of eEye, based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., said. At that time, users of the eEye patch are advised to use the add/remove program in Windows to delete the fix before installing the Microsoft patch.Meanwhile, Websense Inc. said Tuesday that the number of Web sites exploiting the vulnerability has declined from the 200 reported Monday. However, Dan Hubbard, senior director of security at the San Diego-based company, said he has seen an increase in the number of different exploits, indicating that more people or groups are writing code to take advantage of the flaw. As a result, the number of malicious Web sites was expected to increase.

Sophos lists the ‘sinful seven’ online activities that employees find hard to resist

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A survey¹ carried out by Sophos, a global leader in protecting organizations against viruses, spyware and spam, has revealed that 79% of IT professionals believe that employees are putting their companies at risk by failing to act safely online. Sophos warns that despite instructions from IT departments, many employees continue to open unsolicited emails and attachments and download malware from websites.

With cybercrime becoming increasingly more financially motivated, Sophos warns that these employees are jeopardizing the bottom lines of their employers and urges organizations to deal with this problem as soon as possible. Sophos appeals to board level management to lead from the top and champion this cause throughout the company.

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The importance of our culture and how we work is something that means a great deal to me. As a company, we choose to spend time debating and cultivating our workplace as we grow. We know there will be changes along the way, people that come and go, and different business problems we get to face every year. This is why we began using, three years ago, the Best Christian Workplace Institute’s survey of all our staff to have a measurement of where we are each year. We had all our employees take the survey again this year and are delighted to hear that we obtained the 2016 Best Christian Workplace Institute Award for great places to work. We are proud of this honor and look for ways to get better each time around. No culture is perfect (and ours is certainly not) but leveraging a tool like the BCWI to measure our success has been extremely helpful in creating an open, performance drive, and dare I say, fun place to work.

“Good security design takes time, and necessarily means limiting functionality. Good security testing takes even more time, especially if the product is any good. This means the less-secure product will be cheaper, sooner to market and have more features. “

From Bank Systems and Technology Online…

The number of sites distributing “crimeware” – or software engineered for criminal activity like identity theft – nearly doubled in December, rising from 4,630 in November to 7,197 the following month, according to a report issued today by the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).

From the Dallas Federal Reserve Board