Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall Protects Against Data Leaks

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An interesting new improvement to the already-great Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall

Barracuda Networks announced that the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall Protects Against Data Leaks with Broader Outbound Email Content Filtering Capabilities.

Barracuda Spam Firewall 800

These exciting new features to its flagship Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall enhance full inbound and outbound email scanning from the same appliance.

The new features extend the capabilities beyond spam and virus scanning for outbound email, which can safeguard an organization’s email reputation, and include broader content inspection based on policy for both inbound and outbound email on a single appliance. These enhancements ensure that confidential or sensitive information is not distributed outside the organization.

More from Barracuda Networks

“It is crucial for organizations, especially within highly regulated industries, to have the ability to protect intellectual property and other sensitive information from being distributed,” said Stephen Pao, vice president of product management for Barracuda Networks. “The new Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall extends our powerful content scanning features and makes it easier for customers to manage both inbound and outbound email filtering from the same appliance.”

Enforce Corporate Policies through Outbound Email Scanning

The new Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall allows administrators to define policies to prevent confidential or sensitive information from leaving the organization. For example, hospitals and other healthcare organizations that must comply with HIPAA policies that mandate the confidentiality of sensitive patient information such as social security or credit card numbers as well as personal health information can now apply pre-defined dictionaries to outbound email scanning to ensure compliance. In addition, administrators can set up separate rules for inbound and outbound filtering, and review the outbound email quarantine for any policy violations before delivery.

Enterprise-Ready Management

Additionally, the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall now offers increased granularity of its roles-based administration interface, enabling assignment of sender and recipient policies on a per-domain basis. These administration enhancements are useful for larger organizations that delegate administration across different divisions and for service providers offering granular policy controls directly to their end customers.

Pricing and Availability

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall firmware release 4.1 is immediately available in eight models with prices ranging from $699 to $89,999. International pricing and availability varies based on region.

For more information please visit www.barracudanetworks.ca.

About the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall

The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall is available in eight models with no per user fees. A single Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall supports up to 100,000 active users, and multiple units can be clustered together for even greater capacity and availability. Its architecture leverages 12 defense layers: denial of service and security protection, rate control, IP analysis, sender authentication, recipient verification, virus protection, policy (user-specified rules), Fingerprint Analysis, Intent Analysis, Image Analysis, Bayesian Analysis, and a Spam Rules Scoring engine.

In addition, the entire Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall line features simultaneous inbound and outbound email filtering with the inclusion of sophisticated outbound email filtering techniques, such as rate controls, domain restrictions, user authentication (SASL), keyword and attachment blocking, triple-layer virus blocking, and remote user support for outbound email filtering. The Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall’s layered approach minimizes the processing of each email, which yields the performance required to process millions of messages per day.

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Fraudsters limber up for World Cup themed scams

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Posted on by admin in Spam Firewall |Web Filter |Web Site Firewall

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An interesting article from The Register, on the upcoming FIFA World Cup, and how we can expect a whole variety of scams themed on the event.

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Fraudsters as well as footballers are gearing up for this month’s World Cup extravaganza in South Africa.

Football governing body FIFA has already warned [1] supporters to be wary over various forms of scams that are likely to crop up in the run-up to the start of the tournament, which kicks off in ten days.

FIFA lottery, prize draw or competition scams are likely to abound. All represent types of advanced fee fraud where fraudsters attempt to trick people into paying "administrative fees" supposedly needed to secure non-existent World Cup tickets or cash prizes.

"Prize draws and competitions offering tickets to the 2010 FIFA World Cup can only be held by companies who are commercially affiliated with FIFA, such as, for example, sponsors," it said.

FIFA also used the notice to issue a warning against ticket touts and unauthorised agents, a more standard message that has preceded every recent World Cup.

Spam emails touting 419-lite lottery scams themed around the World Cup are already in circulation (as recorded by Trend Micro here and
here). More can be expected to follow as excitement builds toward the start of the tournament next month.

Security watchers report that scam emails seen thus far have not been sent through botnet networks of compromised PCs but via direct spamming from known Nigeria-based 419 scam-friendly IP addresses.

Search engine manipulation, themed around events at the World Cup and designed to divert users searching for video clips and news towards scareware portals, is also likely to crop up, among other types of malware attack, especially once the tournament kicks off.

MessageLabs, Symantec’s hosted security division, has already begun intercepting World Cup-themed email-borne malware attacks. Infected email blocked by MessageLabs were sent from an IP address in Macau, China, and composed in Portuguese (targeting fans of Brazil and Portugal). The infected messages posed as emails from one of the event’s soft drink sponsors.

Football fans receiving the email were encouraged to download a hacking tool that posed as a football-themed application.

“Once downloaded and activated, the malware produces files that generate pop-up messages and in the background collects information on what other machines are on the same network, enabling the attacker further access to the compromised networks,” explained Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence senior analyst.

Symantec has set up a dedicated website that aims to track and warn football fans about net threats connected with the World Cup, as they arise. 2010NetThreat will also feature security advice, competitions and news on the tournament itself. ®

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The original article is on The Register

Popularity: 11% [?]

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Surfing Porn Still Popular at Work

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**excerpt from Globe & Mail Article. Original can be found here.

Barracuda Web Filter

Marco Bonanni of Optrics Engineering, a diamond partner of Barracuda Networks, which specializes in e-mail and web security, said workers should be aware everything they’re doing is marked and logged — even things they might think are innocent.

“The equipment that most organizations install nowadays have months and months of logged data and information about every single message that goes in and out of the company, or every single URL or website that’s been visited” he said from Edmonton.

What’s more, some filters are set or configured to display a message notifying users that a particular website they’re trying to visit has been blocked.

“Even though it is blocked, it still logs the fact that they attempted to go to it” he said.

In most cases, Bonanni said companies are trying to protect themselves against virus infection, but in some instances they’re looking for something specifically to prevent abuse.

**excerpt from Globe & Mail Article. Original can be found here.

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The dangers of weak passwords on Social sites (Facebook / Linkedin)

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Posted on by admin in Barracuda Web Filter |Fortinet |Web Filter

– Phishers Used Facebook to Penetrate Financial Firm’s Computer System (March 4, 2010)

Phishers used Facebook to burrow their way into the network of a large US financial company last year.

The attackers took control of one employee’s Facebook account and using information culled from that individual’s friends’ profiles, sent what appeared to be personal messages to several other company employees about pictures taken at a company picnic.

The phishers learned of the picnic through postings on the hijacked account.  When one of the other employees received a message asking her to click on a link that would allow her to view the pictures, her computer became infected with keystroke logging malware.

When that employee logged in to a VPN account to access the company network, the attackers were able to capture the necessary information to gain access to that network.  The intruders managed to get deeper into the network and take control of two servers before they were detected.

Original Story: http://lastwatchdog.com/facebook-phishers-breached-corporate-network/

Use a different hard password for each publicly accessible website service you use and be suspicious of links in e-mail even if they appear to be from friends.

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The FortiOS 4.0 innovation milestone – by Michael Xie

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Michael Xie

Michael Xie

The FortiOS 4.0 innovation milestone

This portion of a post by Michael Xie, co founder of Fortinet celebrates their new FortiOS 4.0.

Original Post at: http://blog.fortinet.com/the-fortios-40-innovation-milestone/

Today was another big milestone in the history of the company I co-founded and I’m very happy to have this opportunity to tell you about it. Fortinet has released FortiOS 4.0, the firmware upgrade for our FortiGate security systems. This release is the result of a tremendous effort by our development teams over the better part of 12+ months. These highly skilled and talented teams worked hard to design and implement these technology innovations so that we could confidently put the product in front of our customers.

Even in this time of economic uncertainty, I believe that innovation is our greatest strength. While other security vendors are merely coasting along, Fortinet is focused more than ever on expanding our vision for comprehensive and easily managed network security solutions. We are continuously updating our FortiOS firmware and each release builds upon our existing, pioneering innovations. For example, with FortiOS 3.0, Fortinet became the first security hardware company to offer VoIP / IM / P2P security; we were also the first security vendor to deliver integrated SSL VPN with complete content inspection. We’ve now built upon that technology to offer full application control and prioritization of more than 1,000 apps. Overall, our FortiOS 4.0 release delivers on two main objectives:

  1. Give our FortiGate customers access to security technologies and features that were previously only available via a combination of standalone vendors
  2. Continue to drive the increased security capabilities that help protect our customers from the never-ending and evolving threat landscape

FortiOS 4.0 introduces several features, the four most significant of which I want to highlight here:

  • Application Control
  • Data Leakage Prevention
  • WAN Optimization
  • SSL Inspection

more…

Product Links: FortiGate Firewalls

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Barracuda Web Site Firewall Garners SC Magazine Best Buy!

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From SC Magazine:

The Web Site Firewall Model 460 is an application protection firewall, which resides on a single appliance device. The tool recognizes attacks by monitoring network traffic to and from the web server. The default configuration for the device is to run in bridge mode, but it can also be installed in a routed mode. Bridge mode allows the device to inspect traffic bi-directionally to the web server without the use of an IP address. The routed mode is similar to a traditional network configuration, whereby a separate IP address is installed on each interface of the website firewall. This configuration can cause a few problems, which the bridge avoids.

For example, the 460 becomes an inline device, which can cause a central point of failure. For this type of deployment, we recommend using the 460′s redundant configuration. In the default mode, the tool does not stop network traffic if the unit fails. However, all traffic to and from the website would be blocked in the routed mode. The routed configuration is what is known as a “fail secure” configuration. This means that if the Web Site Firewall Model 460 does not explicitly permit the traffic, it will be dropped. The logging on the tool is performed via the syslog protocol. Several different types of events can be configured to send traffic to the syslog server.

As an integrator of many types of systems, the Web Site Firewall Model 460 in bridge mode has “goes in to” and “goes out of” ports. The installation and configuration are as simple as it comes. The entire installation and configuration guide takes up only a single piece of paper. Additional documentation covers the routing installation method, as well as very detailed explanations of the events which triggered alerts.

Support is offered through phone, email and a website. Email support is available 24/7 for all customers, and additional support is available for a higher fee. Barracuda also provides a website with a knowledge base, FAQ and live chat options for support.

The Barracuda offering is priced at $8,999 with no “per user” fees on top of that price. This puts the cost of the device at the lower end of the spectrum.

..end of SC Magazine story. To see the original article, visit SC Magazine.

Pricing and Availability

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall is available in three models: Barracuda Web Site Firewall 360, 460 and 660. U.S. pricing starts at $4,999. International pricing and availability varies based on region. For more information, please visit http://www.barracudanetworks.ca/website-firewall.aspx.

About the Barracuda Web Site Firewall

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall is a complete and powerful security solution for Web applications and Web sites.

The Barracuda Web Site Firewall provides award-winning protection against hackers leveraging protocol or application vulnerabilities to instigate data theft, denial of service or defacement of your Web site.

Many applications are vulnerable to such attacks because application developers do not consistently employ secure coding practices. Barracuda Web Site Firewall is designed to combat all attack types that have been categorized as significant threats, including:

  • Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
  • SQL injection flaws
  • OS command injections
  • Site reconnaissance
  • Session hijacking
  • Application denial of service
  • Malicious probes/crawlers
  • Cookie/session tampering
  • Path traversal
  • Information leakage

To learn more about the Barracuda Web Site Firewall, see the product information pages on BarracudNetworks.ca.

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Google Acting Slow?

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(An interesting article by Joel Esler, published on the Internet Storm Center):

Everyday we receive about 20 reports of “www.xwebsitehere.com” being slow.  Today we’ve received a few reports about Google being slow.  One reader (thanks Neal) even wrote in to say that after he did some monitoring on his connections, he isolated it down to “pagead2.googlesyndication.com”.  Obviously, from the hostname being one of the servers that serves ads to lots of websites. 

Neal stated that after he blacklisted this hostname, his browsing went back to normal.  Anyone else experiencing similar?

(Yes we have received several reports of Google being slow, I’m asking if you can replicate the “pagead2″ issue.)

 Update:  We haven’t heard any more about this today, so, I’m not sure of the end result.  Personally, if my Google Ads are a little slow in loading…  I’m not sure I mind much.

Update 2:  We just received an email from a reader in Denmark, using Everydns.net, is having his Google DNS queries redirected to a Yahoo server.  No more info than that at this time.

– Joel Esler http://www.joelesler.net

 

Popularity: 100% [?]

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Barracuda Web Filter Firmware Release 4.0 Now Available

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Barracuda Web Filter firmware release 4.0 is now generally available to all customers.  This major release includes powerful new features and enhancements, including:

  • Support for Cisco WCCP v1 and v2 enabled routers/switches; allows forwarding of HTTP traffic via a single WCCP-enabled router.
  • Integration with the Barracuda Control Center (BCC); enables administrators to control multiple units from a single location.
  • Expanded Reporting Capabilities; offers 8 new time-based reports including “Top Users by Session Time” and “Top Domains by Session Time.”

To view detailed firmware release notes, click here.

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F-Secure Mobile Security adds anti-theft to give peace of mind to smartphone users

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Smartphones are our most personal computers in today’s increasingly connected life. They have also become an integral part of corporate networks through common usage of VPN and push-email solutions. Smartphones need to be secured as part of the company’s IT infrastructure. Recognition of this is at the core of F-Secure Mobile Security 5, a new version of the powerful smartphone security solution by F-Secure, the global leader in protecting mobile devices.

Smartphones often contain highly confidential information, including messages and pictures of our loved-ones, banking details, emails, business projects and other valuable data. F-Secure Mobile Security enables smartphone users to enjoy the full potential of their devices without worrying about threats to their own or their company’s privacy, safeguarding the privacy of data even in the unfortunate event that the phone is lost or stolen.

Samu Konttinen, Vice President of F-Secure’s Mobile Solutions Business Unit, says: “This launch is the first step in augmenting our leading anti-virus and firewall capabilities by introducing the anti-theft feature. Smartphone users want peace of mind when browsing the Internet and making financial transactions. They also need protection for their confidential data in case the mobile device is lost. F-Secure Mobile Security provides all this, with unrivaled ease-of-use.”

F-Secure Mobile Security introduces the new advanced anti-theft feature with remote lock, remote wipe and theft control functionalities. Remote lock can be used to lock the device to protect confidential information quickly and easily with a single SMS message. The theft control feature activates when the SIM card is changed by locking the device and sending the new SIM information to the owner. As an ultimate safety measure to prevent misuse, it is possible to erase all the data on the phone with remote wipe by sending an SMS message.

F-Secure Mobile Security also protects against spyware that may monitor and record all the actions on a mobile phone, including voice calls, SMS, multimedia and email messages. It seamlessly combines real-time antivirus protection with a customizable firewall to make the phone completely safe against mobile malware.

An advanced 2-layer update mechanism automatically retrieves the newest malware definitions and updates, whenever any data connection is used. The unique SMS update mechanism – patented by

F-Secure – ensures that critical updates are received even when a data connection is not available. F-Secure Mobile Security lives up to F-Secure’s track record of providing the fastest protection in the online world.

New F-Secure Mobile Security 5 will be available in December for smartphones using the S60 3rd edition through the F-Secure eStore (www.f-secure.com/estore), as well as many F-Secure partners. The software will also be available for the Windows Mobile platform in early 2009.

Don’t believe that smartphone security is an issue? This video might change your mind!
 

 
F-Secure Mobile Security allows smartphone users to experience the full potential of their devices without the fear of mobile threats. The application combines real-time antivirus functionality with a firewall making the device completely safe in today’s connected lives. Technical savvy is not required when installing nor running F-Secure Mobile Security.

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Barracuda Networks Acquires BitLeap; Launches Integrated Local and Cloud-Based Backup Solution

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Barracuda Backup Combines Local and Offsite Data Backup for Affordable Disaster Recovery Solution

Barracuda Networks Inc. today announced it has completed the acquisition of BitLeap, an innovative provider of local and offsite data backup and disaster recovery solutions.  As part of the acquisition Barracuda Networks will now offer Barracuda Backup, a complete and affordable data backup and disaster recovery solution, to customers of all sizes and business types. 

“BitLeap developed a compelling technology and services platform for delivering a unique backup solution to the market,” said Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks.  “We believe that the combination of the trusted Barracuda Networks brand, our customer-centric business approach, as well as our extensive worldwide channel reach will enable us to offer an affordable backup solution to our current customers and to mainstream businesses of all sizes.”

Complete Data Backup Solution

Barracuda Backup is an affordable, integrated local and offsite data backup solution that combines the Barracuda Backup Server for rapid restoration on the local network with the Barracuda Backup Service, a secure cloud-based backup service to two geographically dispersed data centers for redundancy. 

Click to enlarge

“No other backup solution provides an affordable means of combining local, appliance-based backup with two offsite replicas,” said Stephen Pao, vice president of product management for Barracuda Networks.  “By maintaining three copies of each customer’s data, Barracuda Backup offers superior levels of disaster tolerance through hardware redundancy, geographically dispersed data centers, elimination of single points of failure, and distance solutions.”

Barracuda Backup copies primary data from any operating system or storage platform and provides fast local storage and restorations, secure data transfers to offsite data centers and leverages industry-leading policy management for data retention.  Barracuda Backup safely maintains backup data offsite using efficient replication techniques designed by Barracuda Networks to conserve bandwidth and minimize the cost of disaster recovery.  Other capabilities include:

  • Automatic backups. Administrators set the schedule for how often backups should run throughout the day. This eliminates the risks associated with manual backup techniques.
  • Full Local Backup. The Barracuda Backup Server offers sufficient storage for a complete copy of an organization’s current and historical data.
  • Fast Local Restore. Administrators can restore data directly from the Barracuda Backup Server at local network speeds. This is the quickest way to recover lost data or recreate historical data from local backups.
  • Secure, Redundant Replication. Multiple layers of encryption, including AES 256-bit, protect the integrity of data transferred offsite using Barracuda Backup. Barracuda Networks’ two offsite data centers use highly redundant disk-based hardware in a fully encrypted and secure format.
  • Data De-Duplication. Using advanced technology, Barracuda Backup reduces the storage and transfer requirements for backups by analyzing each file at the bit level and only copying, transferring and archiving new bit sequences. This advanced de-duplication technology is applied within a single file’s revision history as well as across the entire backup volume. De-duplication is also applied between data sets from multiple locations.
  • Alert Notifications. Barracuda Backup automatically provides email alerts to administrators when service issues are detected, including when the Barracuda Backup Server goes offline. Other notifications are sent when errors or file warnings are detected in backups, or when, expected files for backup are missing.
  • Regulatory Compliance. Barracuda Backup encompasses the security requirements to cover a wide range of industry-specific regulations such as HIPAA, for the healthcare industry, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley for financial organizations.

“Barracuda Backup eliminates the complexity and expense associated with most data backup solutions available for businesses today,” said Pao.

Automatic Health Monitoring and Provisioning
The Barracuda Backup user interface makes it easy to manage and back up data on the Barracuda Backup Server and to schedule reoccurring offsite data backups in the cloud. The Web user interface provides access and control of settings, reports, restores, statistics and account information in order to manage deployed Barracuda Backup Servers even across multiple locations.  In addition, Barracuda Central, an advanced operations center, provisions and monitors the health of the Barracuda Backup Service and provides 24×7 technical support and emergency restoration assistance in the event of disaster or local backup system failure.

Continued Support for Current Customers and Partners
As part of the acquisition, Barracuda Networks plans to increase investment in product development in backup services and solutions.  In addition, all of BitLeap’s employees have joined the Barracuda Networks team.  Barracuda Networks will continue to work with all BitLeap sales channel partners, expanding the depth of its worldwide sales reach, and enabling them to provide better service and support to all existing and future customers. 

Pricing and Availability
Barracuda Backup pricing includes a one-time hardware fee for the Barracuda Backup Server and a monthly subscription to the Barracuda Backup Service plans.  Barracuda Backup Server pricing starts at $999 depending on model and Barracuda Backup Service plans start at $99 for 50GB of storage per month and varies according to how much storage is needed.  Barracuda Backup is currently available in North America only.  For more information, please visit http://www.BarracudaNetworks.ca/backup-server.aspx.

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