Posts Tagged ‘security’

Fewer Kiwi businesses under threat from internet than Aussie counterparts

Tuesday, January 14th, 2014
Photo credit; elhombredenegro on Flickr

Photo credit; elhombredenegro on Flickr

About one out of every five Australian business IP addresses are subjected to Internet security threats every weekday, but that number falls to one out of every eight in New Zealand, according to new research from Deakin University and Trend Micro.

The report, Australia and New Zealand Web threat landscape, is based on monitoring of live Internet traffic between 29 September and 12 October 2013.

The research analysed 170 million Web requests issued from Australia and 20 million Web requests issued from New Zealand per day. There were 450,000 attempts to connect to malicious websites in Australia, compared with 40,000 attempts in New Zealand.

The research also found that, Australian business IP addresses were more likely to be at risk on weekends with approximately one in eight companies susceptible on Saturday and Sunday compared to only one in 13 New Zealand businesses during the weekend.

The United States is the biggest malicious Web hosting country targeting Australia and New Zealand while the Netherlands, Germany and other European Union countries were found to be targeting both countries, too.

To read more on this story, click here.

New Zealand websites slow to respond to industrialised hacking

Wednesday, August 28th, 2013

New Zealand businesses have been sluggish in responding to automated cyber attacks, leaving businesses of all sizes vulnerable, cyber security experts have said.

Modern hacking tools mean that cyber criminals can quickly and easily scan the internet for vulnerable websites and launch attacks and New Zealand is becoming a prime target, Mark Kraynak, senior vice president of US- headquartered data security company Imperva, said.

“Now that the bad guys can find anyone online, [things have] changed. They’ve figured out that the little guys are actually pretty good targets,” Kraynak said.

“It’s probably true that criminals weren’t paying much attention to New Zealand but it’s become easier for organisations to find places to attack here.”

Kraynak claims data attacks in New Zealand are ten times higher than in Australia, on a per capita basis and businesses from the largest banks down to the smallest online retailers are at risk because while other countries were diligent about beefing up online security, New Zealand lagged behind.

To read more on this story, click here.

Building a better password

Friday, June 17th, 2011

stuff.co.nz has a good article with some handy tips on how to create a better password.

It seems we’re not very creative when we come up with our passwords. In 2009, 10,000 Hotmail passwords were leaked. The most popular passwords?  123456, followed by 123456789. Not very secure!

I use the Password Generator tool over at pctools.com whenever I need a new password. It’s great. It instantaneously generates a password of whichever length you choose. So next time you’re in need of a password, give this tool a go.

Is Google evil? Or not evil? That is the question

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

So Google did not commit any security breaches when it collected users’ data in New Zealand, however Luke Appleby writes on Stuff today that he is unclear why Google admits that information breaches are committed in countries such as Ireland and Denmark, but not so in Australia.

Its a valuable question – why is the data collection from some countries considered a ‘mistake’ worth apologising for, but not from New Zealand? It seems that when a country does not specifically request that the data be deleted, Google does not consider it to be a mistake.

Mr Appleby states that “…it was the lack of transparency, and the global attitude of Google which led many to question their “don’t be evil” motto”.

The debate continues….