IP Expo Update from Today Earls Court

Today, in Westminster, Chancellor George Osborne unveiled plans to cut public spending by £83 billion. I was among the thousands of IT professionals crowded into Earl's Court 2 to discover how IT investment can help their organisations survive the new era of fiscal austerity, and emerge financially stronger, more competitive and more profitable.

They were not disappointed.

Addressing a packed audience for the opening keynote address of IP EXPO 2010, Acadia Enterprises CEO, detailed how the new age of cloud computing is set to revolutionize IT service delivery and the business effectiveness of the organisations that adopt it.

"Cloud" said Capellas "will be mainstream within 24 months."

"This bus has already left the station. You can either be under it, or on it," he said.

The same message, with different emphasis was heard from other quarters. In the seminar theatres, VMware's Paul Strong detailed some of the technical challenges that still lay ahead.

Freeform Dynamics' Jon Collins offered timely advice on how to distinguish marketing hype deliverable reality in today's increasingly competitive IT infrastructure markets.

Meanwhile, I enjoyed talking directly to the latest compute, storage and network infrastructure product and technologies showcased by more than 230 exhibitors. LiveEnsure partnered with The Virtual Tech Group Basingstoke were busy as they talked to Cloud providers who need authentication to secure entry points of their systems.

Far sighted organisations are ready to invest in their future, and those who are will be looking closely at the security aspects of their cloud provider.

Online Fraud Protection requires a layered approach.

Identity Management Requires Defense in Depth, Much Like Enterprise Security

I could not agree more with Scott Waddell's blog entry on depth of security. It’s only a matter of time before today super powered cyber criminals find ways to take advantage of the inherent weaknesses in even the best technologies, '2 factor' have been hacked, username and password is not enough... you can google for yourself the stories.

Today’s cyber criminals are so tech savvy and innovative that staying one step ahead of them isn’t always possible. So when it comes to network security, a good defense should be made up of several different layers. That way, even if a hacker is able to exploit vulnerability in one layer of the system, he may be stopped or slowed down by another. This strategy, known as defense in depth, essentially allows organizations to protect the integrity of their systems by slowing hackers down and buying security professionals the time they need to respond to a security breach once it has occurred. This mitigates the damage that malicious hackers can do, even if they are able to make it past initial barriers.

The same basic principle of creating a more comprehensive defense by layering tools and diversifying methods can be applied to fighting online fraud. To successfully combat online fraud, a fraud management system should include the layers of defence including multi-factor identity authentication.

I agree wholehearteldy with Scott that the best offensive against cyber crime today is a multi-layered defense.

http://blog.iovation.com/2010/02/19/fraud-management-requires-defense-in-depth/#more-1580