PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
This week we take a look at new security products from BullGuard and F-Secure, and Kaspersky reveals how a coffeemaker can expose your Wi-Fi password.
BullGuard has unveiled the new version of its Internet Security software, which is fully compatible with Windows 10.
One new feature is Dropbox-compatible backup and encryption. “As one of few security suites to offer secure backup to safeguard files, BullGuard provides 5GB of storage. It also includes convenient, encrypted backup to Dropbox accounts via the software, offering peace of mind that important documents are securely stored,” says the firm.
As well as this, the software has a new Boot Manager for control over processes and applications that open automatically when Windows starts, and new advanced duplicate file detection and cleanup helper to free up disk space quickly and safely.
F-Secure has also announced a new product called the F-Secure SENSE. The product combines hardware and software to provide users with a single source of protections for home devices, including PCs, tablets and smartphones, as well as newer IoT products.
“People are starting to buy all kinds of new smart devices to use in their homes and we know that these devices are already being hacked,” said Samu Konttinen, F-Secure’s executive vice president, consumer security.
“We’ve seen footage from nanny cams streamed online without people’s knowledge or consent, and it’s been proven that intruders can use something as simple as a connected light bulb to get access to people’s homes. Criminals are constantly developing new ways of turning people’s technology against them and security solutions need to evolve to meet this challenge.”
Taking a random selection of the latest IoT products, Kaspersky Lab researchers have discovered serious threats to the connected home.
These include a coffeemaker that exposes the homeowner’s Wi-Fi password, a baby video monitor that can be controlled by a malicious third-party, and a smartphone-controlled home security system that can be fooled with a magnet.
“Our experiment, reassuringly, has shown that vendors are considering cyber-security as they develop their IoT devices. Nevertheless, any connected, app-controlled device, is almost certain to have at least one security issue. Criminals might exploit several of these issues at once, which is why it is so important for vendors to fix all issues – even those that are not critical,” said Victor Alyushin, Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
“These vulnerabilities should be fixed before the product even hits the market, as it can be much harder to fix a problem when a device has already been sold to thousands of homeowners.”
Meanwhile, a survey carried out by Echoworx has found that a quarter of UK businesses do not have an email security solution in place, despite recent high-profile email related data breaches like Sony and WHSmith.
The survey findings looked into employee usage of email security technologies for sharing sensitive corporate data. Beyond the quarter admitting they had no email security solution in place, 57 per cent of respondents admitted that they found their current email security solutions cumbersome and difficult to use.
In other news, Bitdefender has released a decryption tool that automatically restores ransomware affected Linux files to their original state.
This comes following the news that Linux.Encoder.1, the first piece of ransomware to target Linux systems, has recently been discovered.
The tool determines the initialisation vector (IV) and the encryption key simply by analysing the file, then performs the decryption, followed by permission fixing.
Throughout November, PCR is running a dedicated Sector Spotlight on Security – Click the logo below for more articles
