The Biggest Security Stories of 2013

As the year ends, lets take a look at all the security activity that has taken place in 2013.  

Information security is priority for companies.  Security threats and data privacy have been a major concern, there have been big stories of success and failures in the tech industry.
Here are some of cybersecurity’s highs and lows:

Apple Biometrics

Apple launched the iPhone 5s with a fingerprint sensor for identification.  Biometrics has been adopted by smartphones but have been used for years on Corporate laptops as an alternative form of identification.

Companies Embrace Two-Factor Authentication

LinkedIn, Twitter and Evernote launched a two-factor authentication feature.  Providers require stronger passwords including encryption of customers passwords stored on their servers.

Cryptolocker

Cryptolocker ransomware is a high-grade encryption against victim’s files which is spread to network-based storage applications and cloud-based backup services.
Bitcoin payments are demanded to retrieve keys needed to unlock the files from the infection.

Huawei Turmoil

China-based Huawei is under surveillance, following concern from the U.S.  that its hardware components could contain back-door access for Chinese spies.

Cisco’s Sourcefire

Sourcefire founder and CTO Martin Roesch  leads security product innovation under Cisco.  Sourcefire’s intrusion prevention system conducts real-time traffic analysis, sniffing and packet logging.

FireEye is Public

At the core, FireEye’s technology is a virtualized sandbox. With cloud-based mobile and email protection service, and detects suspicious files for malware threats, FireEye is the next generation firewall.

Java Attacks

The Java platform saw an increase of attacks targeting weaknesses in the programming language.  Java vulnerabilities accounted for more than 90 percent of attacks in 2013.

Adobe Source Code Breach

More than 35 million customers passwords were exposed as well as the product source code.  Investigators are still figuring out the cause of the massive fallout.

 

Mandiant APT1 Report

The Mandiant APT1 report exposed China as the source of cyberspionage activity towards the U.S.  The report discovered attacks designed to steal intellectual property from many government agencies and defense contractors.

Edward Snowden’s Leaks

The government contractor stole thousands of classified documents outlining the extent of the National Security Agency’s surveillance.  Cell phone metadata collection, used encryption algorithms to gather massive amounts of Internet communication from major firms.
Lets hope next year tech industries will have more achievements than defeats…

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References:
The 10 Biggest Security Stories Of 2013 – CRN
http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/security/240164781/the-10-biggest-security-stories…