Security

The Federal Trade Commission plans to review whether Microsoft violated a consent agreement with the agency over the privacy of its Passport online password system, following the revelation of a flaw that could have compromised millions of consumers' private data. Microsoft said it has fixed the pro...

Thanks to millions of dollars in investments on the merchant end and widespread upgrades to broadband connections by consumers, e-commerce has begun to move at a faster pace. Still, transactions can bog down, especially over dial-up connections, and security remains one of the biggest impediments to...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has revealed it has been working with attorneys general in 29 states to enforce existing fraud laws against auction scammers. Known as "Operation Bidder Beware," the effort already has resulted in 57 criminal and civil actions. "Having state and federal agencies co...

Just as important as backing up your most valuable documents is ensuring they are not zapped by a malicious virus, consumed by fire or accidentally erased. So far, though, most software and hardware vendors that sell storage products to the Fortune 500 have had little or nothing to say -- let alone ...

A year after launching its Trustworthy Computing initiative, Microsoft still suffers from a security image problem, with key executives at 75 percent of companies polled by Forrester Research saying they worry about vulnerabilities in the software firm's products. However, the research firm also not...

In today's tightly budgeted IT environment, security spending is likely to be squeezed even more than other areas, because expenditures may appear to be unnecessary until a break-in occurs. Of course, no company wants to see its name in lights after a cyber attack. But neither do companies have coun...

Spurred by fears of "hostile environment" employee lawsuits and concerned about lost productivity hours, companies increasingly are turning to anti-spam technologies to eliminate -- or at least reduce the volume of -- unsoliticated e-mail. Several spam-fighting software firms have seen measurable fi...

When it comes to enterprise e-mail, Microsoft Exchange on the back end and Microsoft Outlook on the front end are among the most frequent vectors for viruses and worms. The cost of downtime as a result of this malware plague is measured in dollars, lost productivity, disrupted communications, and ma...

Total security for a corporate network may be a goal of many IT executives, but no matter how much a company invests in security systems, breaches -- originating either outside or inside a network -- are a fact of life in the information age. By budgeting for the extra resources needed to respond to...

On paper, Symantec appears to be one of the hottest tech companies around. Propelled in part by users' need to defend against a rash of destructive and well-publicized computer worms like Code Red, Nimda and SirCam, its stock price has jumped 70 percent in the past year. Nonetheless, leading industr...

Few things are more precious to an enterprise than information. Using it effectively -- which oftens means sharing it efficiently -- can provide a competitive edge, helping separate winners from also-rans. But data is precious in another way: It must be protected, not only against outside threats, b...

As recently as a few years ago, IT personnel were trained to harden their network perimeter, barring outsiders entirely. In contrast, today's security environment is far less clear-cut -- and the role of firewalls is expanding. "A lot of new developments are going on at once," Richard Stiennon, Inte...

The bad news is no secret, but it bears repeating: If you have bought anything online in the past several years, your personal information, including your home address and credit card number, is probably accessible via the Internet -- and available to people with less-than-noble intentions. Fortunat...

Recognizing that more consumers than ever would take to the Internet for holiday shopping this year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission warned consumers to be cautious. Their first piece of advice: Deal with only those companies that you know and trust. But because the Web is a blind medium, sometime...

Made official last month by President Bush, the Department of Homeland Security consolidates 22 agencies, employing a total of 170,000 federal employees, under a single virtual roof. The question on many IT executives' minds is: What can my company gain from this reorganization? The department's 200...