Security

The White House and the Pentagon aren't the only government agencies embracing public key infrastructure -- encryption -- for Internet security. State agencies in Illinois, and other states, like Virginia, are as well, and, in a twist, they are now farming out the management of the services to third...

For anglers, spring is a time for removing the rod and reel from storage and heading to a lake or stream. For phishers of another kind, however, spring is the season for tax scams. Phishing -- the use of phony e-mails and Web sites to obtain personal information about people -- has become such a pro...

Based on interviews with 40,000 American residents, the Department of Justice (DoJ) has reported that 3.6 million -- or about 3 out of every 100 -- households were victimized by perpetrators of identity theft between July and December 2004. The numbers differ from earlier research findings and sugge...

Microsoft has announced the repackaging of four hosted solutions from FrontBridge Technologies, a company that it bought in August 2005, as well as a new licensing model and road map for Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services. The rebranding comes as no surprise, said Joe Wilcox, senior analyst with Jup...

In the wake of a string of high profile data breaches reported by banks, retailers and credit card companies, a U.S. House panel on Thursday approved a bill drafted to protect consumers from identity theft and credit card fraud. The House Financial Services Committee cleared the Financial Data Prote...

Three computer researchers created a stir Wednesday when they released a paper at a conference in Pisa, Italy, describing how to infect Radio Frequency Identification tags with a computer virus, but the likelihood of a digital disease rampaging through the world's supply chains is slim, at least for...

For years, the vast majority of purchases made from e-commerce sites have relied on the same technology to keep them safe and protect consumers from identity theft. Secure socket layer, or SSL, has helped complete millions of Web transactions, often working without consumers knowing it. When an SSL ...

In the past, cyber attacks were largely designed to destroy data, but today's attacks are increasingly designed to silently steal data for profit without doing system damage that would be noticeable to a user, according to the latest Symantec Internet Security Threat Report. Symantec released on Tue...

The recent US$15 million settlement between ChoicePoint and the Federal Trade Commission signals regulators have cranked up the heat on companies that allow personal customer data in their possession fall victim to breach or exposure. ChoicePoint, a broker of consumer data, acknowledged that informa...

Auction giant eBay is hitting back at a British magazine's assertion that the site has become a hotbed for various types of fraud. Computing Which? magazine published a story calling on eBay to do more to protect users of the site from fraud, saying that by its count some 130 eBay-related fraud repo...

Symantec on Tuesday announced that it has completed the acquisition of Relicore, a provider of data center change and configuration management solutions. Relicore's flagship product, Relicore Clarity, automatically discovers, maps and tracks changes to application and server components in real time...

Most electronics consumers had never heard of rootkits before last year's Sony BMG debacle. Now, rootkits have the attention of the U.S. public -- and the U.S. government. The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday suggested that a measure outlawing the controversial software may be in order. A...

AOL and Yahoo are planning to launch a certified e-mail program in the coming months in conjunction with partner company Goodmail Systems. The two Web giants are positioning the service as an additional perk for trusted marketers that want to ensure their e-mails reach their intended recipients. Con...

Enterprises today have a number of key questions when it comes to setting up and maintaining an online presence. Some of these concerns include critical Web-related security problems; scalability; and being aware of new online challenges expected in 2006. Who better to ask about these issues than Ak...

Nearly nine out of 10 businesses and other organizations faced some type of computer security incident, a fifth of them were attacked 20 times or more and some US$67 billion was lost as a result of the incursions, according to the 2005 FBI Computer Crime survey. The report, released Thursday by the ...