Integrity Defenders, Inc. Rolls Out New Online Privacy Service to Protect Your Personal Information

Integrity Defenders, Inc., an online reputation and privacy management firm, has today announced the company's new PrivacyID service geared towards removing personal information from online people search databases.

People search databases offer personal information such as your name, phone number, address, salary, and other details about your personal life. Integrity Defenders' new service will search the web for this information and remove it from online databases. "Identity thieves have begun utilizing these databases to gain access to victims online accounts," warns Michael D'Alessio of Integrity Defenders.

Members can sign up for Integrity Defenders' monthly PrivacyID service for $12.99 per month. The PrivacyID service continuously monitors people search databases such as MyLife, Whitepages, U.S., Search, and many other online databases for your personal information and removes it for as long as you are subscribed.

For more information on Integrity Defenders new PrivacyID service please visit http://www.integritydefender.com/privacy-id-services.php

About Integrity Defenders, Inc.:

As a leader in Personal Online Reputation Management, Integrity Defenders creates, manages, and promotes positive search engine results for their customers. Their innovative approach to online reputation management delivers unparalleled results within the ORM industry. Integrity Defenders is a privately held company, located in Andover, New Jersey.

DATAFORT Fixes the Price of Backup with Byebaq Professional

DataFort, the innovative developer of data protection managed services, today unveiled Bytebaq Professional, an offsite backup service that automatically protects all the data on a workstation, laptop or server for a fixed yearly fee which is currently the lowest in the industry. With Bytebaq Professional, support staff is made more efficient by removing the need for endless checks of the backup sets; in a corporate environment, Bytebaq Professional makes it possible to monitor company-wide backup activity without leaving your desk. And as costs are fixed the service also eases the IT budgeting process, while increasing data protection by storing information offsite in one of DataFort’s European datacentres.  
Bytebaq Professional changes offsite backup in two critical ways: 1) the cost is fixed per machine regardless of the amount of data to be secured.; In the case of servers this is based on the size of the server’s hard drives. But no matter what the yearly subscription fee will always be much smaller than competing options, and 2) the service backs up all the data on the source device: this way customers are not under pressure to only protect critical data to lower the associated cost. In addition, Bytebaq offers all the features organisations have come to expect from a professional backup service: for example multiple backup sets, USB disk recovery for faster data retrieval, 256-bit AES encryption and advanced compression algorithms.
‘Just like VoIP systems have changed the payment paradigm for voice communications, Bytebaq Professional has changed the payment paradigm for offsite backup,’ said Marcie Terman, business development director at DataFort. ‘Bytebaq is a strong proposition for both end users and resellers because without any sacrifice on performance its financial model offers both a highly competitive price and nearly effortless revenues. The split between the actual service and the support allows our resellers to enjoy higher margings while DataFort focuses on providing a secure, stable and flexible backup platform. . As storage and transmission costs have plummeted, the costs associated with customer service have increased.
Bytebaq Professional allows resellers to take efficiency to a new level; while DataFort handles the backend, the partner can focus on reselling the service either as a standalone offering or as an element of a larger support service. ‘Bytebaq Professional will encourage end users to abandon support-intensive tape backup,’ continued Terman. ‘And it will be much more profitable for our channel partners than supporting organisations reliant on ‘DIY’ offsite backup, giving them a significant competitive edge.’
Bytebaq Professional’s resellers will have the choice to either charge their customers directly or to have DataFort manage the payment process; for any customer brought online by a channel partner prior to 30th June 2010 DataFort will apply an additional discount of 30% on the wholesale price. This means a reseller could secure all the data on a customer’s laptop for a mere £28 a year wholesale, or the data on a one-terabyte server for just £315 a year wholesale. The service will be demoed at Channel Expo in London on 12th and 13th May 2010, where DataFort will also be showing the Hi-5 High Availability Service aimed at larger enterprises with more demanding data protection needs.

How To Protect your Photocopier Hard drive and Security

 OnlineConect.co.uk have been aware of the security threat posed by  digital photocopiers for many years and carry out a full data wipe on all machines before they are resold. Jenny Robinson of Online Connect UK says “we are pleased this issue has been brought to the attention of consumers by CBS  as we have been protecting our customers data but are aware this is not common practice”.

However, the risk to Corporate Intelligence and sensitive information is understated in the CBS report (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/19/eveningnews/ma ...) according to Online Connect UK. The problem goes back to the photocopier industry as a whole. When digital photocopiers came in there was a complete lack of training in security and the problem goes beyond hard drives. Online Connect share some tips on securing your photocopier at the end of its life.

Identity Theft

Avoid copying sensitive information on public photocopiers. The information could be retreived from the hard drive.

Hard Drives

Hard Drives are packed full of sensitive information. From incoming faxes, id protected print jobs to frequently used files. Multifunctional digital copiers have a data encryption facility and hard disk data encryption should be enabled. Additionally Secure Document Release retains the document until identity is verified via a PIN, password.

Delete all information on hard drive at end of copiers life.

The Print Server

The first digital photocopiers used print servers and IT Departments were aware of the information stored. Fiery Servers and Cyclone served as the connection between the digital photocopier and the network and for many high volume or colour photocopiers still do. But with modern digital photocopiers often the print server is embedded in the machine and it is the print server part of the machine that may hold the most vital information. In a remote print server like fiery or cyclone it will contain a copy of the print job on its internal hard drive so enable encryption an wipe hard drive of the print server at the end of the copier cycle of life.

Often large Companies route all print requests through a central server, this allows data archiving to be achieved efficiently and the central server may be remote. In such cases the digital copier can contain network addresses of the companies central server including subnet mask, ipaddress and passwords.

The Print Server should be cleared of all information at the end of the copiers life.

Scanning

The machine may hold data on individual workstations and passwords. Machines with scan to email will hold private email addresses of individuals within the corparation or organisation.

All scanner and email information should be removed.

Print Queue

Often held in the RAM of the machine pending print jobs can contain sensitive information. Often the digital copier is replaced due to unreliability and by simply clearing a paper jam the machine can start printing out a wealth of information.

Clear all pending print jobs.

Fax

A list of fax numbers transmission times dates and received documents may be stored on a multifunction photocopier.

Delete all fax information at the end of copiers life.

Passwords

Machines set up for multiple user accounts will have common passwords stored. Unfortunately these passwords may be used in other areas of the business. A print out of photocopier passwords could lead to a more serious threat to security if passwords are used elsewhere within the organisation.

All passwords should be removed at the end of the photocopiers life.

Many used photocopiers are destined for india, africa and the middle east and it is important to ensure secure information is removed from the machine.

If you have concerns about security of your office equipment you can find Online Connect contact details on there website: http://www.onlineconnect.co.uk/

Red Condor Warns of IRS Underreported Income Notice Spam

Email security experts at Red Condor have issued a warning for a new blended email threat that once again spoofs the Internal Revenue Service. The text-based email, which has a variety of subject lines, such as “the CP2000 notice (Underreported Income Notice),” is asking recipients to “review your tax statement on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website.” When someone clicks on the link, they are taken to a landing page that includes the IRS header, as well as a link to the IRS Privacy Policy. On the landing page, visitors are asked to “Please review (download and execute) your tax statement.” The link on the page actually installs a version of the Zbot Trojan, which hides itself on compromised computers and allows remote attackers to steal bank-related information, log-in details and other personal data. This campaign is being sent from a botnet, has a moderate to high volume, and more than 2,000 unique sending IP addresses. A similar campaign was blocked in the fall of 2009. 

“Given its familiarity with so many people, the IRS is a common target, especially during this time of the year as consumers and businesses are getting ready for tax season,” said Dr. Tom Steding, president and CEO of Red Condor. “In addition, many people fear the IRS, and an email with the subject line containing underreported income does catch people’s attention. Unfortunately, because the email appears to come from the federal government, they may be more likely to follow the instructions in the email. And it doesn’t take very many people clicking on the links for the spammers to profit from the campaign.”   

As with past IRS spam warnings, the IRS has made it very clear that it does not communicate with individual taxpayers via email, so any email with the IRS’ brand on it is likely going to be a scam and should be forwarded to the IRS at phishing@irs.gov and then deleted. 

This campaign was detected by Red Condor’s Spam Trigger filter, which quickly identifies spam and phishing campaigns before they penetrate users’ networks. Once identified, the campaigns are quarantined and reviewed as rules are written and automatically distributed to Red Condor’s antispam appliance and Hosted Service customers. 

Visit http://www.redcondor.com/resources/whitepapers/new-threa ... to download Red Condor's white paper on emerging email threats.

Sourec: http://www.prlog.org/10594525-red-condor-warns-of-irs-underreported-income-notice-spam.html