Security Notes archives
By Ellen Messmer, NetworkWorld.com
July 20, 2006
Entrust today announced it closed a deal last night to buy Redwood City, Calif.-based Business Signatures for $50 million....
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July 19, 2006
"Technical Fellow" is the new job title for Mark Russinovich, co-founder of Winternals with Bryce Cogswell. Yesterday Microsoft announced it acquired Winternals for an undisclosed...
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July 18, 2006
Mobile computng, especially when associated with the plethora of handheld devices on the market today, is a network manager's headache when it comes to security....
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July 17, 2006
Spending two weeks in the Dordogne region of France with family was a retreat from the the Web and network technology. In a region famous...
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July 05, 2006
Ellen Messmer is on vacation, well earned, by the way. -- The Editors....
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June 30, 2006
Storage vendor EMC won a secret bidding war to buy RSA Security for over $2 billion, with the deal expected to officially close by early...
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June 29, 2006
The Office of Management & Budget, the arm of the White House responsible for overseeing the federal agencies, is adopting a get-tough attitude in the...
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June 28, 2006
RSA Security and Broadcom Corp. yesterday said they've entered an arrangement under which Broadcom is licensing the RSA SecurID technology for integration in the Broadcom...
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June 27, 2006
What a lot of righteous indignation from the White House that the major newspapers, the New York Times, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and...
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June 26, 2006
People are often drawn to search for their roots, but not too many go in search of rootkits. Mark Russinovich, co-founder of Winternals Software, has...
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June 23, 2006
Just when the uproar over the massive data loss at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs is dying down a bit, two more federal agencies --...
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June 22, 2006
The recent news item here about Citibank mandating use of security tokens for its small-to-midsize business customers in the U.S. drew interesting responses from readers....
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June 21, 2006
Yet another hole was found in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet yesterday, the second this week, which Microsoft says it's investigating. In the meantime, if you're worried...
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June 20, 2006
While healthcare providers perform wonders of medicine these days, we don't typically associate them with innovation in networking. But in our story this week "An...
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June 19, 2006
This week's Technology Update in Network World focuses on two upcoming encryption standards for protecting data stored on tape and on disk....
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June 16, 2006
There are a lot of ways to do strong authentication in lieu of passwords that can be shared and re-used. Slowly but surely, banks with...
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June 15, 2006
Crypto expert and curmudgeon extraordinare Bruce Schneier is at it again with the June 16th edition of his ever-engaging monthly "Crypto-gram" newsletter. This time Schneier...
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June 14, 2006
Yesterday's "Patch Tuesday"--that day of the month when Microsoft discloses the problems in its products that could cause you big headaches if you don't apply...
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June 13, 2006
Foundstone, the divsion at McAfee which develops vulnerability-assessment products, today posted free tools to help software developers improve security at their e-commerce sites. Specifically, Foundstone...
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June 12, 2006
Most are familiar with Microsoft's "blue screen of death," that yawning empty blue that appears when Windows can't recover from a system error. It's one...
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June 08, 2006
Hillary Clinton, New York senator, former First Lady and possible presidential candidate, was talking this week about how she finds the Internet to be a...
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June 07, 2006
Yesterday McAfee said it has acquired start-up Preventsys, which makes the Preventsys Security Risk Management System for consolidatng multi-vendor data for a dashboard view of...
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June 06, 2006
Financial-services firm UBS and federal prosecutors go to trial today against a former UBS employee, Roger Duronio, accused of planting a software logic bomb inside...
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June 05, 2006
The job of the chief information security officer (CISO) is gaining in prestige, and the corporate techie can aspire to this top security position, according...
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June 02, 2006
George Rathbun, director of IT architecture at Pfizer, recently shared his thoughts about the security measures crafted for information sharing in the biomedical industry under...
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June 01, 2006
Microsoft climbed into the ring to slug it out for the consumer desktop security market with its Windows Live OneCare service, which also includes anti-virus,...
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May 31, 2006
That employee at Veterans Affairs who took home sensitive data on 26.5 million U.S. veterans, only to have that information stolen along with his laptop...
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May 30, 2006
Software technology is far from being a neutral realm untroubled by questions of good and evil. Bring up the question of whether "rootkits" are always...
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May 26, 2006
The online teen hang-out, MySpace, bills itself as a "a place for friends." But sometimes things don't seem so friendly....
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May 25, 2006
Although Check Point's pursuit of Sourcefire hit a snag and the deal fell through, Sourcefire has a new beau that's ponied up some cash to...
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May 24, 2006
StopBadware.org makes value judgments about the kind of software that wants us to love it unconditionally no matter what it does. A refreshing change in...
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May 23, 2006
Back in World War II, the U.S. government tried to encourage people not to blab about sensitive information through a famous ad campaign whose posters...
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May 22, 2006
Nortel next month will add an intrusion protection feature to its application switch, with help from Symantec, which is supplying the IPS functionality for it....
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May 19, 2006
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), that part of the United Nations where governments and the private sector try to coordinate network activities in a divided...
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May 18, 2006
Cybertrust yesterday announced with Hong Kong-based network provider CPCNet that it would open a security operations center to provide managed security services in China starting...
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May 16, 2006
There's considerable skepticism about using biometrics, whether the cost is worth it or possible technical glitches known to come up with fingerprint scans and the...
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May 15, 2006
The revelations by newspaper USA Today that the National Security Agency, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, convinced AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth (but not Qwest) to...
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May 12, 2006
As Mother's Day approaches this weekend, it seems appropriate to pay tribute to women whose lives included both motherhood and achievements in information technology. Radia...
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May 11, 2006
When IT execs get to deliver a keynote address, standing in front of thousands of IT professionals attending a conference, what’s one thing they...
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May 10, 2006
Jeason James Ancheta, the 21-year-old criminal who masterminded a "bot" empire for financial gain, was sentenced yesterday to 57 months in prison....
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May 09, 2006
Analysts and software providers are taking at look at the security ramifications of Vista, Microsoft's new operating system, and some say they don't particularly like...
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May 08, 2006
When birds migrate, they expend a huge amount of energy winging their way from one place to another, depending on sheer endurance to complete the...
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May 05, 2006
Newark-based business Crafts by Veronica has filed a class-action lawsuit against Yahoo and other parties alleging fraudulent advertising practices, including use of spyware-based ads, click...
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May 04, 2006
With the debut of start-up FireEye this week, the question of whether a new approach to network security--making use of a 'virtual machine' mimicking the...
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May 03, 2006
If you're using the Firefox 1.5 browser, yesterday was the the day to get the patch update for it to prevent the exploitation of a...
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May 02, 2006
Network World's Technology Update section this week features "Secure SIP," the mechanism defined by the IETF standard RFC 3261 for encrypting the Session Initiation Protocol,...
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May 01, 2006
At Interop this week, Internet Security Systems and Extreme Networks expect to be demonstrating how Extreme's Black Diamond switch and ISS intrusion-prevention systems work together...
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April 28, 2006
Trend Micro this Monday will introduce an updated version of its VirusWall appliance (which detects worm outbreaks and cuts off network access to infected machines)...
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April 27, 2006
Chris Loehr, network manager at International Bancshares, a $10.3 billion financial services company headquartered in Laredo, Texas, recently spoke with me about IBC's plans to...
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April 26, 2006
The U. of Texas at Austin’s president, William Powers, Jr. yesterday had to write a public letter saying that any students, faculty or alumni associated...
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April 25, 2006
Intel yesterday announced it will deliver a dual-core processor this fall with what it calls vPro, a "virtualization technology" that will let desktop PCs make...
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April 24, 2006
RSA Security today announced it has acquired privately-held PassMark Security for $44.7 million....
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April 13, 2006
Ben Rothke, director of security technology implementations at financial services company AXA, put his finger on biometrics when he said it "gets away from the...
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April 12, 2006
Microsoft has seen the enemy and it is...invisible. It's the rootkit, stealthy software designed to hide other pieces of code, a menace so hard to...
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April 11, 2006
It's "Patch Tuesday" again, the second Tuesday of the month when Microsoft, when it thinks necesary, will issue software updates to correct problems found in...
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April 10, 2006
San Francisco-based OPSWAT, founded by Benny Czarny four years ago, is a small firm comprised of a few software engineers doing a lot of detail...
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April 07, 2006
At the InfoSec Conference this week, one well-attended session featured consultant Tom Walsh as the presenter on the topic "Managing IT Risks through the Assessment...
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April 06, 2006
Start-up Mu Security formally takes the wraps off its protocol-based analysis tool this week, the Mu-4000. If it works as expected, it could turn out...
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April 05, 2006
Tom Ridge, who retired in February 2005 after serving as the nation's first Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security for two years, yesterday related...
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April 04, 2006
Code Green Networks, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based start-up, makes its debut today with a gateway appliance for monitoring unauthorized outbound transmissions of sensitive content....
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April 03, 2006
Claria's Gator eWallet and other software it has offered over the years to users for free download--in exchange for the understanding it can serve up...
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March 31, 2006
Increasingly, banks are victims of cybercrime but are trying to overcome phishing and hacking attacks to find ways for their customers to have confidence in...
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March 30, 2006
Yesterday Dell and Wave Systems announced the Dell Latitude D620 and Latitude D820 notebook computers will include the Trusted Platform Module chips for security, and...
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March 29, 2006
As we at Network World wax nostalgic over our twentieth anniversary this week, it's time to indulge in a look back on information technology, a...
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March 28, 2006
The swanky Talbott Hotel, nestled in Chicago's "Gold Coast" district, has to be on watch against the usual types of crime that might occur in...
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March 27, 2006
The online auction giant eBay is fighting to stop the criminal sale of eBay customer account information , according to IDG News....
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March 24, 2006
Check Point Software Technologies and Sourcefire have called off their planned merger, issuing brief statements saying they'd withdrawn the paperwork filed with the U.S. government....
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March 23, 2006
There are many motivations for hacking, such as thrills or financial gain, but one that's gaining ground is high school kids hacking their way into...
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March 22, 2006
StopBadware.org, that organization set up last January to take a stand against spyware and questionable adware, today named the first inductees into its badware hall...
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March 21, 2006
Phishing scams to lure victims to fake Web sites that mimic the real Web site of the Internal Revenue Service are abounding as tax-filing time...
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March 20, 2006
Taking a look at the topic, we found there's no shortage of security surveys that poll IT managers and their end-users for their take on...
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March 17, 2006
Remember how it used to feel when your school's year-end report cards went out and you wondered how you'd do, especially in respect to your...
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March 16, 2006
A virus that encrypts documents and demands a ransom to de-crypt them has been spotted making its way slowly across the Internet. Plus, another virus...
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March 15, 2006
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has shot down the Chinese bid to have the WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) security protocol accepted as...
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March 14, 2006
Network World welcomes a new contributor, Mike Rothman, president and principal analyst at Security Incite, who will be writing a column on security....
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March 13, 2006
If your job is in IT security, you are paid much more to make policy, supervise technical staff or talk it up with business executives...
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March 10, 2006
The University of Wisconsin's campus newspaper, the Badger Herald, yesterday had a story about how a technical service specialist in the department of information technology...
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March 10, 2006
New York University's School of Law next week is hosting two days of discussion about spyware's social ills as it brings together legal experts, academics,...
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March 09, 2006
A recent chat with Art Coviello, CEO of RSA Security, offered insight into why RSA went out and bought Cyota last year, a very different...
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March 08, 2006
When Microsoft starts handing out "fact sheets," it's time to pay attention, because the Redmond giant can be hard to pin down on such things...
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March 06, 2006
Reconnex, which makes products that detect unauthorized transmission of sensitive data, recently brought together three security managers using its iGuard and iController gear to perform...
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March 03, 2006
It's become a common concern that two hash algorithms used for a long time as a means to verify data content should be retired. Both...
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March 02, 2006
Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., the Israel-based maker of firewall products, wants to buy Sourcefire, the Maryland-based maker of intrusion-detection/prevention gear and sponsor of the...
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March 01, 2006
An escalating dispute last year between Symantec and Hotbar.com, which makes ad-suppported software that Symantec's anti-spyware software can detect and delete, came to a head...
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February 28, 2006
The International Information Systems Certification Consortium, or ISC2 for short, has long served its members through professional certification services as well as surveys the Palm...
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February 27, 2006
At the Amtrak train station in San Jose after the RSA Conference had wrapped up, I went to buy a ticket to Berkeley to visit...
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February 24, 2006
(Editor's Note: Ellen Messmer is on vacation. Blogging for her here is Network World Executive News Editor Bob Brown.)...
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February 23, 2006
(Ellen Messmer is on vacation. Blogging for her here is Network World Senior Editor Denise Pappalardo.) Scott Levine was sentenced to eight years in prison...
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February 23, 2006
(Ellen Messmer is on vacation. Blogging for her here is Network World News Editor Paul McNamara.)...
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February 22, 2006
(Editor's Note: Ellen Messmer is on vacation. Blogging here in her place is Network World News Editor Paul McNamara.)...
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February 21, 2006
(Editor's Note: Ellen Messmer is on vacation. Blogging for her here is Network World Senior Editor Cara Garretson.) In her recent interview with Nemertes Research...
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February 21, 2006
(Editor's note: Ellen Messmer is on vacation. Blogging for her here is Network World Senior Editor Tim Greene.) Microsoft and Cisco hawked their plans at...
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February 16, 2006
In the search for security, it's dawning on IT professionals that it's the small things that matter now. Those handheld smartphones with huge amounts of...
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February 16, 2006
My colleague Christine Burns, Network World's executive editor for testing, is also at the RSA conference and files this report on one session she attended...
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February 14, 2006
It's not only TV comedians who've gotten a lot of mileage from the news that vice president Dick Cheney accidentally shot a hunting companion instead...
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February 13, 2006
The security industry has generated a blizzard of news in San Jose this week the way nature has covered the Northast section of the country...
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February 10, 2006
It's time again for yet another annual RSA Conference 2006, the 15th one. And as someone who has been to most of them, I can...
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February 09, 2006
It takes a bit of nerve to voice an opinion about any part of the IT security market, but consultancy Forrester Research is speaking up...
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February 08, 2006
While vendors are always updating products and services, God bless 'em, it's not often you get to hear about a security firm daring to try...
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February 07, 2006
The recent spate of reported data breaches in which confidential data, such as medical or financial information, is either stolen or just simply revealed by...
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February 06, 2006
While much of the world was fretting about the Nyxem worm, which failed to have much impact, the Moscow-based Russian Trading System stock exchange had...
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February 03, 2006
Nyxem, the much-feared computer worm programmed to overwrite the files of any infected deskttop computer on Feb. 3rd, has so far turned out to be...
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February 02, 2006
Anti-virus vendors have been tracking an e-mail-borne worm circulating for the past two weeks. Dubbed Nyxem, Blackdoom, Kama Sutra and other names, it is viewed...
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February 02, 2006
F-Secure Corp., the Helsinki-based software provider of security products to combat viruses, spam, and spyware, says some attacker is faking an F-Secure e-mail address to...
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February 01, 2006
Another chapter of the NSA wiretapping story is unfolding with the Electronic Fronter Foundation, a public-advoacy group, suing AT&T yesterday for allegedly opening up facilities...
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January 31, 2006
The Web site of Advanced Micro Devices has been compromised, apparently by for-profit hackers distributing spyware, according to IDG News....
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January 30, 2006
Mazu Networks has published its annual "Internal Threat Report" based on a survey of IT professionals asked to describe the use of their networks and...
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January 26, 2006
180solutions, the Bellevue, Wash.-based advertising software firm, was under fire this week from advocacy group Center for Democracy and Technology, which filed two legal complaints...
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January 25, 2006
The computer virus has been around for decades, spyware we've heard is either hacker code grabbing sensitive data and sending it off, or maybe an...
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January 24, 2006
A 20-year-old hacker named Jeanson James Ancheta yesterday pled guilty in Los Angeles federal court to four felony charges for crimes that entailed infecting computers,...
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January 23, 2006
IBM today shares its 2005 Global Business Security Index Report with customers that use its security services. The report, based on the attacks and threats...
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January 20, 2006
While much has been made of Microsoft's adoption of public-key-infrastructure (PKI) smart cards following a hacker break-in a number of years back, Microsoft has found...
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January 18, 2006
United Kingdom-based insurance and pension corporation Royal London says it's going to deploy the 3ami Network Security monitoring and auditing system to keep track of...
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January 17, 2006
The recent SANS Institute study on salaries shows that American information security professionals earn more than their peers in other countries, and that overall in...
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January 13, 2006
The same expert who exposed Sony BMG Music Entertainment's use of a "rootkit" as a cloaking technique is now pointing at security vendors Symantec and...
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January 12, 2006
After the Dept. of Defense (DoD) last November found out a portion of its global network had been subverted by a botnet, the reponse was...
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January 09, 2006
The stark difference of opinion between Microsoft and the SANS Institute over the nature of the Windows Metafile (WMF) vulnerability last week engendered one of...
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January 05, 2006
Microsoft, bowing to popular demand, Thursday released a fix for its Windows Metafile flaw ahead of its earlier promised date of January 10....
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January 04, 2006
The year 2006 is starting off heavy in security woes with the Microsoft Windows Metafile (WMF) exploit front and center as attackers take advantage of...
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December 21, 2005
The New York Times’ revelatory articles on how President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct domestic intelligence on U.S. soil to identity possible...
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December 19, 2005
As 2005 draws to an end, we asked IT professionals to tell us what they’d like to see happen next year. Our year-end issue...
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December 16, 2005
DSW is a footwear retailer with about 190 stores in 32 states, and it was a bad day indeed last March when the company had...
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December 09, 2005
With so many news stories this year about corporations losing laptops or mainframe tapes with customer data on it, you'd think encryption would be commonplace...
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December 05, 2005
Instant messaging (IM) still tends to make me think of a consumer communication, full of teenagers bewailing the angst of adolescence over their home computers...
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November 21, 2005
According to two surveys conducted by Ponemon Institute under sponsorship of PGP Corp, there's a high cost to be paid by businesses that suffer security...
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November 14, 2005
While the People's Republic of China may be a market open to foreign providers of security products, there are still qualms about sharing sensitive security...
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November 07, 2005
A "botnet" is a group (or 'herd') of zombie machines controlled by a "bot herder" (or 'bot master'). A 'zombie' (sometimes called a 'drone') is...
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October 31, 2005
The security industry has had a hard time even defining "spyware," much less stamping it out. All manner of annoying adware and malicious programs, such...
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October 24, 2005
The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) is one of those inconspicuous government organizations that probably only grab your attention if you operate a bank...
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October 17, 2005
Parents find themselves telling their kids "mind your behavior" when they see them getting out of control. Now, IT professionals are trying to get desktops...
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October 10, 2005
By now you've probably heard that Check Point Software Technologies, that Israeli-inspired success story in the firewall business, intends to hook up with Columbia, Md.-based...
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September 26, 2005
Looking at the most recent semi-annual "Internet Security Threat Report" from Symantec, we're given to learn that there aren't just more Windows-based viruses around, but...
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September 19, 2005
New security products may be just what you hoped someone would give you for your birthday. But along with the thrill of possibly fending off...
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September 12, 2005
The deputy head of the Federal Treasury of Russia, Alexei Popov, is in charge of IT strategic planning and project guidance at the Russian agency,...
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September 06, 2005
At last week's Auto-Tech Conference in Detroit, information technology managers from the auto industry spent time mulling the future of electronic-document exchange. One lone voice,...
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August 29, 2005
The Washington Post caused a stir last week with a page 1 story that officials in the Defense Department, speaking anonymously, are concerned that network...
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August 22, 2005
It looks like a mobile cellular phone, and it is one, but it's also a computer with significant storage that may also have Wi-Fi and...
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August 15, 2005
Public-key infrastructure is a ponderous phrase to describe the magic that's possible by combining encryption keys in a public-private pair to secure e-mail, sign documents,...
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August 08, 2005
The twice-told tale of former Internet Security Systems researcher Michael Lynn is leaving its mark as a kind of morality play for the networking business:...
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August 01, 2005
The entire Lynn episode, one that preoccupied the press for days, is at heart just another example of bureaucratic inefficiency in the IT industry, albeit on a topic of security that obviously should have been treated with more care
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July 25, 2005
The corporate security managers in the Jericho Forum ["Are firewalls expendable?"] aren't the only ones expressing discontent about perceived limitations in the long-used security architectures...
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July 04, 2005
The perimeter firewall, standing guard at the edge of the corporate network year after year as the chaos of the Internet erupts, holds a venerable...
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June 27, 2005
The Network World Clear Choice Test this week comparing seven endpoint security offerings offers a number of insights for those considering this type of policy-enforcement...
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June 20, 2005
Conflict between the security vendors and the so-called adware companies --whose marketing software is making itself right at home on corporate PCs these days --...
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June 13, 2005
While some have accused the Gartner consultancy of hype over the years, analysts there claim to be diligently monitoring the hype they perceive coming from...
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June 06, 2005
When an employee sends sensitive corporate data without authorization, it's said the company has suffered "data leakage." Sometimes employees are leaky by mistake, sometimes they...
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May 30, 2005
Smart phones are those gee-whiz mobile handhelds for yakking and doing computer-pounding things all at once. Sounds smart to me, except according to a recent...
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May 23, 2005
Our look at the state of Web filtering this week focuses on what businesses, government agencies and public schools are doing to monitor use of...
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May 16, 2005
Imagine getting an anonymous extortion note demanding thousands of dollars or face the prospect your e-commerce Web site -- the lifeblood of your operation --...
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May 09, 2005
Consultant Tom Patterson gained international experience in network security during his career with KPMG Consulting, Deloitte & Touche and as chief strategist for e-commerce at...
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May 02, 2005
The Trusted Computing Group is an industry organization formed by plenty of heavy hitters back in 2003 to develop open specifications for so-called "trusted computing"...
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April 25, 2005
It's not necessarily easy for competitors to get together to discuss sensitive subjects, such as security, but that's what the chemicals industry has tried to...
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April 18, 2005
Encryption of sensitive data alone won't solve the problem of identity theft or put an end to the almost daily announcements by business, government and...
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April 11, 2005
Phishing is an epidemic of growing proportions, as our story this week notes....
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April 04, 2005
In Shakespeare’s play of doomed love -- perhaps doomed because Romeo offs himself thinking his beloved Juliet is dead but she’s not, big mistake --...
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March 28, 2005
Banks have to answer to a wide array of state and federal regulators, and last week the ones in the nation’s capitol jointly issued a...
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March 21, 2005
With E*Trade Financial and Bank of America, among others, eyeing two-factor authentication tokens as a way their retail customers could log into online accounts rather...
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March 14, 2005
As our story focused on healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson, the IT security professionals at J&J have compelling ideas on procedures for safe e-commerce....
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March 07, 2005
The question has always haunted the denizens of the e-commerce world, buying and selling in a blur of bits and bytes. Is that really you,...
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February 28, 2005
President George W. Bush and smart cards may not be phrases that are often linked together. But this week is different, with the National Institute...
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February 21, 2005
Now that Bill Gates himself has made it official -- Microsoft is getting into the anti-spyware and anti-virus business -- the pressure is on. Competitors...
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February 14, 2005
Along with the big players -- Microsoft, Symantec, IBM, to name a few -- a handful of start-ups are also out to get attention during...
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February 07, 2005
In the 1966 movie "The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!" made during the Cold War Era, a Soviet sub with no hostile intent...
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January 31, 2005
There have sometimes been different ways to define spyware and viruses. On a philosophical plane, it's worth noting, vendors typically do agree that something is...
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January 24, 2005
Santa Clara, Calif.-based consultancy International Network Services has a new survey of 202 IT professionals worldwide that asks how frequently they make use of "ethical...
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January 18, 2005
Just to say the words “child pornography” is enough to cause decent people to wince and turn away. That’s understandable, and why it’s all the...
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January 10, 2005
Not since its acquisition of Romanian anti-virus vendor GeCAD Software back in the middle of 2003 has Microsoft sent such tremors through the anti-virus market....
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January 04, 2005
The holidays at the end of the year are the time that people in the press tend to receive a barrage of cards and occasionally,...
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December 20, 2004
One thing you couldn’t help but notice amid the excitement over Symantec’s deal to buy Veritas for a whopping $13.5 billion is that Wall Street...
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December 13, 2004
The CSO Interchange, a forum for chief security officers to meet and exchange their views, last week convened with 85 CSOs in attendance, according to...
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December 06, 2004
While the world is well populated by Java-based smart cards, the debut of the first card based on Microsoft’s .Net technology, about which we report...
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November 30, 2004
I'm told Nov. 30 is Computer Security Day; started back in 1988 when the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest...
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November 22, 2004
On a recent flight up to Boston, I found myself sitting next to a young guy in a light-tan military jumpsuit who turned out to...
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November 15, 2004
In that TV game show of decades past, “To Tell the Truth,” the challenge for contestants was figuring out the “real” person from among a...
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November 08, 2004
Spyware has joined that public enemies list populated by threats that include viruses, worms, and spam. The growing recognition of this has IT managers looking...
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November 01, 2004
Wireless LANs are quietly moving into every corner of American life -- coffee shops, airports, home offices and corporate suites -- so why should we...
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October 25, 2004
Cisco and Microsoft last week made something of a surprise announcement by saying they intend to work together to integrate two separate and emerging technologies...
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October 18, 2004
Spyware, that vaguely defined collection of software accused of secretly infiltrating the desktop computer as adware or malicious trojans to collect personal information, now has...
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October 04, 2004
Despite worries about terrorism, the Olympics in Athens proceeded smoothly, marred mainly by controversy over judging. The IP-based network that connected 60 venues associated with...
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September 27, 2004
If someone had asked me to combine the names Betrusted Holdings and TruSecure Corp., I would have come up with something like “Behold Secure TruTrust.”...
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September 20, 2004
Little noticed in this mud-slinging frenzy of an election season is that President Bush late last month signed a presidential directive with important technology implications....
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September 13, 2004
Over the past year, computer worms have become one of the most dreaded security threats to any organization, as our story this week about global...
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September 07, 2004
Having just returned from Detroit’s Auto-Tech Conference last week, I can tell you the mood is a little dark when it comes to the level...
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August 31, 2004
Richard Stiennon, you may recall, is the Gartner security analyst who gained considerable attention by declaring intrusion-detection systems that simply monitor for threats are destined...
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August 23, 2004
Spyware, as the plethora of adware, keyloggers, and trojans is often called these days, is starting to get the kind of attention from business IT...
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August 16, 2004
On the topic of Windows-based medical equipment and applying security patches for it, we have heard from a wide range of sources in the past...
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August 09, 2004
In a world where clinical patient-care systems are more and more integrated into high-speed networks - not unlike enterprise-resource planning systems, for instance - there...
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August 02, 2004
If you're the type who goes on vacation with a crime mystery or thriller to read, you might want to take "Wi-Foo, The Secrets of...
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July 27, 2004
Intrusion-prevention systems are in the news, with eEye Digital Security, Symantec and NFR Security each casting a hat into the IPS ring with a range...
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July 19, 2004
You may never think of hospitals quite the same way again, but it turns out that quite a lot of patient-care medical equipment sold these...
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July 05, 2004
Patching of Windows-based systems is a job that has to be done even on patient-care medical equipment, as our story this week on hospitals points...
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June 28, 2004
High school and grade school students have access to the Internet in many districts these days, but a survey of 200 technology managers at schools...
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June 21, 2004
Outlining a vision of the future for e-commerce is not something you hear security managers do very often. After all, they're up to their elbows...
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June 14, 2004
Good old network switches are poised to take on a new job within the enterprise as the security-enforcement point that goes far beyond the old...
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June 07, 2004
With so many computer worm outbreaks in the past year, Congress is pondering the question of how well government agencies go about the process of...
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May 31, 2004
Spyware is one of those annoying byproducts of the Internet -- a great experiment with a few other waste products, like spam -- which you...
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May 24, 2004
There's no argument over the need to patch software as quickly as possible to prevent exploits associated with vulnerabilities as they become known. The larger...
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May 17, 2004
For years, network managers have said they'd like to be able to require anyone coming onto their corporate networks have up-to-date anti-virus signatures and software...
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May 10, 2004
It was the Sasser worm, of course, that made headlines last week, crashing PCs and flooding networks round the world. Anti-virus experts were comparing it...
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April 30, 2004
The Department of Defense last week published its long-awaited policy on wireless in a document known as Directive 8100.2, Use of Commercial Wireless Devices, Services...
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April 26, 2004
Imperva, a start-up co-founded by CEO Schlomo Kramer, also co-founder of Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., has an application-layer firewall appliance out this week of...
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April 19, 2004
In researching this week's story on quantum cryptography, I had the opportunity to speak with IBM research scientist Charles Bennett, who teamed with University of...
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April 12, 2004
Most organizations would probably associate encryption with data protection and secrecy. But an unusual new book, entitled "Malicious Cryptography: Exposing Cryptovirology," is a jolting reminder...
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April 05, 2004
Hacker realities hit home as Kevin Mitnick took the stage at the recent InfoSec show in Orlando. Mitnick is now a security consultant after spending...
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March 29, 2004
The InfoSec Conference 2004 last week (see story) was as substantive as ever, packed with worthwhile sessions on everything from vulnerability assessment to security for...
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March 22, 2004
Symantec recently weighed in on how bad the malware situation has gotten in its semi-annual threat-assessment report (see here and here); this week it's ICSA...
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March 15, 2004
Symantec's semi-annual threat-assessment report, the rough equivalent of an Internet health check-up for computer viruses and various other afflictions, presents a disturbing diagnosis for us...
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March 08, 2004
Gary McGraw, chief technology officer at Cigital and well-known for over a decade of research into security issues surrounding software programming, is out with a...
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March 01, 2004
The recent Network World product review of about a dozen network-based intrusion-prevention systems (see here) accomplished what it set out to do. And that was...
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February 23, 2004
Now in its thirteenth year, the RSA Conference that takes place this week is certain to be as action-packed as ever....
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February 09, 2004
A network manager at a large U.S.-based manufacturing company last week told me that his company wants to extend its wireless LAN infrastructure beyond initial...
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February 02, 2004
Though the current job market for IT professionals may seem gloomy, there are a few rays of hope shining through the clouds....
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January 30, 2004
The widespread outbreak this week of the MyDoom mass-mailer worm, which spread by tricking end users into opening infected files, renewed debate over whether companies...
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January 26, 2004
There are network-based intrusion-prevention systems that work so accurately and so reliably that network managers who decline to even consider using them out of worry...
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January 19, 2004
Bank One's vice president and manager of information security, Matt Dokman, and Ian Rathie, the bank's information systems director in charge of application security, have...
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January 12, 2004
The FBI, which does what it can to nab criminals guilty of computer crimes as well as all the other rotten stuff, is now trying...
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January 05, 2004
Every decision in life comes with risk, if not reward, and Midvale, Utah-based consultancy Burton Group drives home that point well in a report...
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December 22, 2003
Remember Dan Geer-Dr. Dan Geer to you-who was fired from security firm @stake in late September for sounding off against Microsoft as a "national security...
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December 15, 2003
It's not exactly World War III out there, but Dr. Sherif Kassem Fathy, professor of computer science and information systems at Ain-Shams University in Cairo,...
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December 08, 2003
In general, it seems, corporations buy IT products and then use them strictly for what they were intended. If anything, the software might be underused,...
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December 01, 2003
Cisco recently launched a strategic push to adapt first its routers and then its switches to be able to automa
