Application Security: Features

Many companies spend a small fortune and deploy a small army to secure themselves from the many security threats lurking these days. But all those efforts can come to naught when making any of these common mistakes. The results can range from embarrassing to devastating, but security experts say that all are easily avoidable.

A recent string of high-profile ActiveX vulnerabilities caused the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) to advise users to disable the ubiquitous Microsoft browser plug-in technology altogether. The vectors for these recent exploits include a third-party image uploading tool used on both the Facebook and MySpace social networking sites, and flaws found in Yahoo's Music Jukebox, Real Networks' RealPlayer, and Apple's QuickTime.

Companies that specialize in helping businesses speed delivery of their applications and Web content are increasingly involving themselves in IT security as the continued proliferation of systems-defense technologies has become a potential roadblock to the performance and quality of the services they already provide.

I'm a CISO who has worked in the US financial services industry both as a regulator and for a large services company. In this column I'm going to let you in on one of the biggest, dirtiest secrets in the industry: The companies that get the least amount of scrutiny from financial regulators actually present some of the greatest risks for systemic financial market manipulation and fraud. I'm talking about financial news and brokerage service companies.