Farscan has finalized plans for its 2nd office in India. The new facility will be located at the Pent house in Penta Menaka building  on Marine Drive in Kochi, India. This new facility is expected to be fully operational by December and will focus exclusively on Mobile application development. This software facility will cater exclusively to Farscan’s international clients and provide training support services in addition to development.

Please contact your farscan service partner for more details.

Flexispy Ltd – A Seychelles based company, just launched an iPhone version of their flagship product intended to facilitate spying on unsuspecting mobile users.

The company claims its iPhone version of the software supports

• SMS Logging to intercept all incoming and outgoing SMS messages.
• Reviewing Call History & Sent Emails
• GPS Location monitoring
  
• Remote Control using SMS commands
• Monitoring via secretly calling the iPhone and listening in using the iPhone’s Microphone
• Remotely uninstalling the software
• … and more

The company sells five flavors of its software varying in features and prices that start from USD 39.00.

Luckily, the product only works on Jail-Broken iPhones for now. Physical access to install the spying software is also needed. However, once installed FlexiSpy can hide all signs of the phone being jail-broken.  The best defense against FlexiSpy at this time seems to be physical security controls.

According to a recent survey of 30 CEOs and 183 of their top  executives over a six month period by the Ponemon Institute, CEOs & their top executives seem to be at a disconnect about security measures and risk exposure at their companies. The survey queried 213 senior executives including chief operating officers, division presidents, and chief information officers about their awareness on data security and threat at their companies.

Among the CEOs surveyed, 53 percent responded the chief information officer is accountable for data protection, while only 25 percent of senior executives sided with that opinion. However, nearly 85 percent of executives felt that a failure to prevent security breaches during their tenure would not jeopardize their job.

Who is responsible for security in your organization

[Source: Business Case for Data Protection - Study of CEO and other C-level Executives, Ounce Labs]

Only 3% of the CEOs responded that they perceived cyber crimes to be the the source of greatest risk to their data security, while the majority of CEOs – 31% – believed stolen or lost laptops and data storage devices to be the greatest risk.

[Source: Business Case for Data Protection - Study of CEO and other C-level Executives, Ounce Labs]

The survey also showed a great gap between measures that should be used versus those that are currently used to measure the effectiveness of data protection efforts. Respondents felt asset protection and reputation management measures should be used more.

The effectiveness of data protection efforts

[Source: Business Case for Data Protection - Study of CEO and other C-level Executives, Ounce Labs]

Over all, the survey concluded that C-level executives understand the need for good data protection measures. Even though they might be driven by regulatory and compliance needs, a rising majority understands the need for data protection practices that address reputation protection and customer trust and loyalty. The complete research report can be downloaded from Ounce Labs – the sponsor for the survey.