Cisco has announced the “end-of-life” for Cisco PIX Security related products and has encouraged the migration to Cisco ASA 5500.  Businesses face a growing number of network security challenges due to many different dynamics in the industry.

The number and sophistication of attacks is increasing, with threats such as botnets and the exploitation of multiple vulnerabilities in many of today’s Web services, applications, and back-end systems. Increasing collaboration with business partners and customers requires more security at what was the Internet edge and new forms of secure remote access to critical business data. Many advanced technologies, such as unified communications and wireless, are being adopted as mission-critical infrastructure and require new forms of security to protect them. Finally, regulations pertaining to business governance and privacy are affecting businesses more than ever and forcing them to change their business practices and increase their overall level of information security.

On January 28, 2008, Cisco announced the end-of-sale and end-of life dates for Cisco PIX Security Appliances, software, accessories, and licenses. The last day for purchasing Cisco PIX Security Appliance platforms/bundles will be July 28, 2008 and the last day to purchase accessories and licenses will be January 27, 2009. It is important to note that Cisco will continue to support Cisco PIX Security Appliance customers through July 27, 2013.

Cisco PIX Security Appliance customers are encouraged to migrate to Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances. In addition to providing the same robust firewall and IPsec VPN capabilities as Cisco PIX Security Appliances, the Cisco ASA 5500 Series offers significantly better performance and scalability, SSL VPN support, advanced Unified Communications (voice/video) security, and a modular design that allows you to add features such as intrusion prevention (IPS), antivirus, antispam, antiphishing, and URL filtering. Migration to the Cisco ASA 5500 Series is straightforward, because consistent management and monitoring interfaces allow you to take advantage of your knowledge and investment in Cisco PIX Security Appliances.

The Cisco ASA 5500 delivers many benefits, including the following:

• Assists businesses meet compliance and regulatory requirements like HIPAA, PCI and many more.
• Delivers secure mobility services to improve access to SSL VPN technologies.
• Overall cost to maintain one or more security services is lowered.
• Gives customeres the ability to take advantage of training and operational experience from Cisco PIX Security Appliances.
• Secures unified communications with end-to-end encrypted voice and video communication with greater capacity and scalability.

Why Migrate to Cisco ASA 5500? 

Better Performance. Stronger Security. Increased Scalability. Protection from application-layer threats.

Digital Reach PIX to ASA Migration Services

The Stration Worm, found mostly in SPAM, could pose a real threat given the potential its creators could unleash.

Security vendors are rating the Stration Worm ( also known as Warezov, Stration and Stratio ) as a low risk infection but admit that the worm is difficult to work with. 

The malware is a virus spread via mass-email and infects machines running Windows.  The infected computer, usually infected due to opening an attachment via email from a spam message, then sends itself out again to other email addresses located in the host computer’s contact list. 

The tricky part is the code is capable of downloading new versions of itself as frequently as every 30 minutes from a batch of websites on the Internet.  The new versions are created by the creator of the original hacker.  This new way is more difficult to identify and solve because the code resides on host computers that can be altered to stay ahead of the virus protection efforts.

Sample Email Subject: “This is not shown on TV.” with attachment: picture0000.zip.

This leading email worm is certainly something to watch.

Are you protected?

Related:
http://antivirus.about.com/od/virusdescriptions/p/stration.htm

http://www.spywareguide.com/product_show.php?id=3108

http://www.sophos.com/security/analyses/w32strationx.html

Microsoft’s marketshare increases in the collaboration and content management system markert.

More than 300 companies began the migration to Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint Server most of whom were former users of IBM’s Lotus Notes / Domino communication and collaboration software.

Microsoft offers a free suite of tools designed to help companies migrate from Notes/Domino to Outlook/Exchange/Sharepoint.  The free migration tool is aimed at companies with hundreds of thousands of users.

About 101 million corporate mailboxes run Notes today.  But 304 million e-mail boxes will run Outlook and Exchange by 2011. 

The migration software, bundled as Microsoft Transporter Suite, focuses on moving Lotus Domino 6 and 7 users to a system based around Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.  The software divides the migration into batches of users or applications and this division is seen as a real improvement among IT experts.

According to a white paper by Excipio Consulting LLC, the cost of migrating a 30,000 employee business would be $6.6 million for all software, developers and extra support staffers.  But, by employing the Microsoft migration software, a company could expect to save up to $1.5 million per year by using Microsoft.

Digital Reach Inc., is positioned to help your company migrate to Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint.  For more information about IT system migration, click here.

Digital Reach, Inc., a Dallas, Texas based firm, specializes in delivering cutting-edge IT solutions that evolve with your business. We focus on individually designed solutions that meet your specific requirements and retain several key certifications. Our entire company works as one large team of experienced, forward-thinking experts who are passionate about what they do. It is this passion that allows us to offer you the latest IT solutions in the ever-changing technology environment.

Finjan Inc. reports that attackers infected at least 10,000 trusted web sites with malware last month using the Random.JS Trojan toolkit.  Random.JS is an exceptionally sneaky Trojan that infects the targeted machine and sends data from the machine back to the attackers controlling it via the Internet.  The information that is stolen includes documents, passwords, surfing habits and other forms of compromising information.

“Random.JS uses varying methods to remain undetected and keep spreading,” he said. “It is able to break antivirus signatures and store malware on legitimate sites.” The Random.JS toolkit is a piece of JavaScript code that morphs every time it is accessed, Ben-Itzhak said. As a result, it’s nearly impossible to detect with traditional signature-based anti-malware products.

The Random.JS attack is performed by dynamic embedding of scripts into a Web page, he said. It provides a random filename that can only be accessed once and is done in such a selective manner that when a user receives an infected page once, it will not be referenced again on further requests. This method prevents detection of the malware in later forensic analyses.

The list of attack toolkits includes MPack, NeoSploit, IcePack, WebAttacker, WebAttacker2 and MultiExploit, along with newer toolkits like Random.JS, vipcrypt, makemelaugh and dycrypt.

Security vendors warn of the rising use of attack toolkits in recent months.

Are your systems protected?  Let Digital Reach assess your network security strategy.

Smart-phones are set to become the next major security challenge for IT according to a CompTIA survey conducted this year.  The survey polled 1070 small businesses in North America and 60% reported they had seen an increase in security issues related to the use of hand-help computing devices over the last year.  The concern is if businesses will view the risk as too great a burden to place on their IT departments and will instead ban the use of them within their corporate environments.  Many IT services firms are preparing for a whole new generation of security applications for mobile devices and how to secure access.

These handheld computing devices give workers the ability to work while “on-the-go” by allowing access to key information residing back at the work or home office.  But, this simple access to information is creating a growing set of security concerns for companies.  Mobile users requesting access to the company network remotely is a potential security threat.  The fear is that a virus could potentially jump from phone to phone to network much like pc-to-pc worms and viruses have done in the past.

Business-oriented smart-phones come from the manufacturer with decent built-in protection like encryption and firewalls.  But, smart phones geared more toward the consumer market have far fewer safety features in place.

To learn more about data security and data protection, click here.

At Digital Reach, our knowledgeable team specializes in helping you:

• Stay productive wherever you are with security-enhanced access to information and resources from virtually any PC with Internet access.
• Store your key data in a single, secure location, so your people can always find and share the information they need.
• Help safeguard your information - and your business - with automatic data backup and recovery.
• Use your Windows Mobile® devices to access contacts, calendars, and more - from just about anywhere, at any time.

As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, we are experts at Microsoft® Windows® Small Business Server 2003 R2 deployments. By delivering advanced functionality designed specifically for small businesses, this complete, affordable network solution can help you make the most of your IT investment.

Plus, with a knowledgeable partner to help implement your server solution, you can be confident that your systems will be running smoothly, so you can focus on what really matters: growing your business.

Contact us today for a technology assessment.