eHarmony analysis shows people just don’t care about passwords

Trustwave's SpiderLabs has completed an analysis of the passwords dumped on the Internet in this month’s eHarmony breach.

Image source: FR

The results of the analysis reached the depressing conclusion that too few people really seem to care about password strength.

As it was, more than 1.2 million passwords were cracked in 72 hours, using three NVIDIA GPUs and the oclHashcat and John the Ripper cracking tools.

Are these tools being used against your members? Read the full article to learn more.

Operation High Roller Targets Corporate Bank Accounts

Two security firms say a new type of cyberattack is targeting corporate bank accounts.

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The attacks began in Europe but have spread to Latin America and the United States.

So far, hackers have attempted to steal at least $78 million in fraudulent transfers from accounts at 60 or more financial institutions.

Read the full article to learn more.

Did ONE high-tech worker bring RBS to its knees?

Was RBS brought to its knees by ONE junior IT technician?

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A junior technician in India caused the RBS computer meltdown which froze millions of British bank accounts, it was claimed.

The ‘inexperienced operative’ erased a massive swathe of information during a routine software upgrade for the Royal Bank of Scotland and its subsidiaries NatWest and Ulster Bank, according to reports.

Read the full article to see if your CU IT staff is up to snuff.

DroidSheep: Android tool for session hijacking

DroidSheep is a simple Android tool for web session hijacking (sidejacking).

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The tool listens for HTTP packets sent via a wireless (802.11) network connection and extracts the session id from these packets in order to reuse them.

The tool's main intention is to demonstrate how EASY it can be, to take over nearly any internet account.

Read the full article and watch the video to see how it works.

Dozens Held in FBI Credit-Card Fraud Sting

The Manhattan District Attorney and the FBI released details of a huge international cybercrime takedown.

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The sting, known as Operation Card Shop, was established to thwart criminals from stealing credit or debit card information from the Internet and using the information for fraudulent transactions.

According to a news release, the coordinated action involved 13 countries and resulted in 24 arrests.

Read the full article to learn more about the sting. Were any of your members impacted?

IBM Acquisitions Deliver Storage for the Rest of Us

Beginning in late 2005, IBM recognized the huge potential in the storage market, investing in a big way in storage hardware, software, and other storage infrastructure elements.

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“We made somewhere between 13 and 14 acquisitions between 2006 and 2010,” said IBM systems storage VP, Bob Cancilla. “We wanted to invest more organically, taking some of our own technology from R&D, but at the same time not to be afraid to go out and acquire where it makes sense.”

IBM’s storage portfolio has become extremely comprehensive for all ranges of organizations, including Credit Unions.

IBM is not buying companies and technologies and hoping for the best. Read the full article to see how IBM is bringing storage to the mass market with a vengeance.

Keys to Cloud Success: Security, Flexibility, Reliability and Management Simplicity

During the Dell Storage Forum 2012 in Boston, Brocade Global Solutions Architect Roger Bouchard met with Stu Miniman of Wikibon.org as part of theCube’s conference coverage.

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“In talking to customers about SAN security, it used to be that storage administrators would have their eyes glaze over when asking them about security,” Bouchard said.

Bouchard added that the advent of the cloud model has forced security, networking and storage teams to work closely together to address security, which is an impediment to businesses moving to the cloud, particularly when it comes to data confidentiality.

Read the full article and watch the video to get Bouchard's view on how Fibre can help address cloud security concerns.

Big Data Must Shift from Creativity to Scalability and Reliability

Geoffrey Moore of Mohr Davidow Ventures and author of many books including Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, and Inside the Fault Line, delivered the keynote at the Hadoop Summit 2012.

Image source: Article

In the article, Moore discusses how early media companies, such as Yahoo, which found the Hadoop stack, found the Big Data space, but now the rest of the world is figuring out how and when to start working with Big Data.

In assessing how the market will evolve, Moore said early adopters will start with projects. Those that are successful will get visibility while others will hold off. But as successful use-cases emerge, others will jump in.

Read the full article and watch the video to get Moore's expanded view on Big Data success.

Big Data and the Cloud – Take the Lead or Be Disrupted

Most organizations have successfully tackled structured data collection and some have even overcome some of the challenges associated with structured data analysis.

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Unfortunately, the methods used rely on data stores that were built "the old way".

Big Data requires a new look at how we collect and analyze information, and "the true power and incremental value comes from layering on unstructured, contextual information on top of this structured data," claimed Kim Stevenson, Vice President Information Technology Group CIO at Intel. "Bring in the data, assess what’s important, and get out."

Read the full article and watch the video to see how Intel is driving adoption of the Cloud and the use of Big Data.

CHART: Here's How Fast Square Is Growing

Square, the payments startup run by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, is growing payments volume at a runaway clip.

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For Square, payments volume is a very close proxy for revenues: It takes a 2.75% cut of most transactions, which it then splits with Visa, MasterCard, and the banks.

The company has 330 employees at last count. We don't believe it's profitable yet, but at these growth rates—20 percent in the last two months—it could easily make money if it chose to. We think instead it's going to keep spending to acquire small-business customers.

View the full size chart and read more about Square and how it could impact your CU.

7 tips for establishing a successful BYOD policy

This pressure might leave you wondering the keys to developing a BYOD policy and how best to implement it.

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The seven core ideas contained in the article should be a part of any good Bring Your Own Device program. Each idea comes with many important questions to ask yourself, your IT associates and your executive team while developing a BYOD policy.

First on the list: Specify what devices are permitted. It's important to decide exactly what you mean when you say "bring your own device." Make it clear to employees who are interested in BYOD which devices you will support - in addition to whatever CU-issued devices you continue to deploy-and which you won't.

Read the full article to see the rest of the BYOD tips.

Central logging with open source software

A common thread among many IT/Engineering roles is having the data available, searchable, and visible.

Image source: Atom Smasher

While in the midst of implementing a comprehensive solution, this post is a brain dump and road map for how the author went about it, and why.

Read the full article to see if open source logging is right for your CU.

Woman Who Couldn’t Be Intimidated By Citigroup Wins $31 Million

Sherry Hunt never expected to be a senior manager at a Wall Street bank. She was a country girl, raised in rural Michigan by a dad who taught her to fish and a mom who showed her how to find wild mushrooms.

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In November 2004, Hunt, joined Citigroup (C) Inc. as a vice president in the mortgage unit. It looked like a great career move.

Hunt’s team was responsible for protecting Citigroup from fraud and bad investments. She and her colleagues inspected loans Citi wanted to buy from outside brokers and lenders to see whether they met the bank’s standards.

“All a dishonest person had to do was change the reports to make things look better than they were,” Hunt says. “I wouldn’t play along.” Instead, she took her employer to court -- and won. In August 2011, five months after the meeting with Polkinghorne, Hunt sued Citigroup in Manhattan federal court, accusing its home-loan division of systematically violating U.S. mortgage regulations. Read the full article to learn more.

Arizona Credit Union Hopes New Tech Will Attract Small Businesses

While the ability of credit unions to lure disaffected consumers away from large banks is debatable, Desert Schools Federal Credit Union believes it can use technology to lure small businesses away from the banks they use for transaction processing.

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Only 8,500 of its 300,000 members are businesses. To reach a broader range of business clients, the Phoenix-area credit union is planning to implement a web based, centralized payment processing system and broader financial services portal that provides access to payment processing services via any web-connected device.

The CU will also offer a web-based reporting system that provides access to financial and business reports.

What is your Credit Union doing to attract and keep your members? Read the full article to learn more about how this CU is using new technology.

Underbanked, But Not for Long

Financial institutions and tech firms are working to use mobility and analytics tied to prepaid cards to reach underbanked consumers

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Financial institutions can spot healthy customers among prepaid users to grow deposits and, eventually, credit and loan accounts.

At the same time, consumers escape the high fees of payday lending and check cashing businesses, a chronic problem that can prevent consumers from establishing a track record that makes them more attractive to banks.

The bottom line: New mobile and data analysis technologies and processes are making it easier to reach underbanked consumers. Read the full article to see how your Credit Union fits in.