Security

The Pentagon took an undisclosed number of computers offline on Wednesday after it detected a cyber-attack on its systems earlier this week, Pentagon spokesperson Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler told the E-Commerce Times. This resulted in some of the Pentagon's e-mail systems being taken down. Peppler ...

This past May, the country of Estonia was hit hard by what its authorities called a "virtual war." This war took the form of an attack on the country's computer infrastructure. Many governmental and commercial sites were hit. The attacks on the country's commerce seemed to focus on the country's med...

Ethernet has been steadily extending its influence as it continues to evolve beyond the local area network. The ongoing development of virtual local area network, or VLAN, standards, is paving the way for Ethernet to play a key role in next-generation networking. As networks expand, so do opportunit...

The arrest of a Seattle man said to be one of the most prolific spammers in Internet history is sending shockwaves across the e-mail world, but the arrest likely will do little to stem the flood of unwanted messages deluging in-boxes around the globe. Strong law enforcement action across multiple ju...

ChoicePoint is still doing damage control two years after identity thieves set up fake businesses and bought personal information on 163,000 U.S. residents from the data broker. A settlement reached this week between ChoicePoint and attorneys general from 43 states and the District of Columbia may w...

Corporations appear to be spending more time and money on regulatory compliance now than at any other time in recent history. In fact, the largest U.S. corporations spent an average of $4.6 million implementing Sarbanes-Oxley Act section 404 controls in their first year of implementation, and Forres...

More Americans are taking a carefree attitude toward the nuisance of spam clogging their e-mail in-boxes, according to a new study. Better familiarity, spam filtering and a decrease in pornography-laced spam have eased users' concerns over the scourge. "It's starting to become part of life online," ...

When online advertisers use pay-per-click advertising, as much as 15 percent of the clicks they pay for could be fraudulent, according to the results of a new study announced Friday. Under a pay-per-click agreement, an online advertiser must pay for every time a potential customer clicks on its ad.

We don't typically stop to think about it, but we all need feedback in order to succeed. Imagine, for example, trying to cook a meal without periodically tasting it to see if the spices are right. When it comes down to it, trying to do anything -- even the simplest of tasks -- is much more difficul...

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales unveiled on Monday a comprehensive legislative proposal that would toughen copyright protections, including penalties for the attempt to infringe on a copyright. Speaking before members of the Chamber of Commerce Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, Gonzales...

Only careless scholarship, author Geoffrey Pullum claims in his book The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, has propagated the myth of dozens or hundreds of Eskimo words for snow. Aggressive fact-checking, he says, would put an end to the myth. The information security industry might learn a thing or two...

In this fast-paced world, there is one thing most computer users have in common: We have all lost data at one time or another. For the lucky ones, this is not a painful experience -- just one of inconvenience. Unfortunately for others, the data loss is impacting because the lost data was irreplaceab...

After several years of reported abuse, the Bush administration has rescinded lender access to a federal database containing sensitive financial information on about 60 million college students. The temporary move bars college loan firms from accessing the government-run database over concerns of dat...

Just when directors thought that no more could possibly be expected of them -- especially after the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley -- they are now confronted with a new acronym: ERM, or enterprise risk management. Directors are now expected to conduct oversight of their company's enterprise risk, when ...

Two of the retail industry's largest trade associations have joined forces with the FBI to develop a network dedicated to fighting organized retail crime. The Law Enforcement Retail Partnership Network, known as LERPnet and due to launch on April 9, is a secure, national database that will allow ret...