Brian Prince

Two sweeping bills that would set new standards for data breach notifications made their way out of the Senate Judiciary Committee Nov. 5. The committee voted yes on the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2009 (S.1490) and the Data Breach Notification Act (S.139). The vote means the bills are now headed to the […]

Microsoft will release six bulletins next week for Patch Tuesday, including three critical bulletins focused on Windows security. All totaled, 15 security vulnerabilities will be fixed in this release. Besides the critical Windows bulletins are three others rated “important.” Among them is a fourth bulletin impacting Windows. Unlike last month, none affect Windows 7, which […]

A researcher at Sophos called the UAC feature in Windows 7 ineffective after numerous pieces of malware snuck by the technology in a test. Microsoft first introduced User Account Control in Windows Vista to improve security. After some users complained the number of alerts it generated were annoying, the company pledged to cut down on […]

A Dutch teenager has backed away from an extortion scheme targeting Apple iPhone users. The scheme was uncovered Nov. 2 when reports surfaced that an attacker was compromising iPhones and holding them for ransom. After using port scanning and OS fingerprinting to find iPhones in T-Mobile’s 3G IP range, the attacker took advantage of the […]

M86 Security has acquired Finjan as part of a push into the enterprise secure Web gateway and software-as-a-service businesses. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the buy is the latest in a string of acquisitions and mergers by the company. Formed last year by the merger of Marshal and 8e6 Technologies and […]

The Pirate Bay shutdown didn’t slow piracy. In fact, according to McAfee, the number of new file-sharing sites hosting unauthorized, copyrighted content shot up in the past three months. In their Third Quarter Threats Report, researchers at McAfee took a look at piracy scene. What they found was that cyber-criminals are taking advantage of The […]

Federal authorities unsealed charges in Boston Nov. 2 against a man they allege developed tools to help people steal free Internet access by modifying cable modems. Charges against 26-year-old Ryan Harris, who has residences in Redmond, Ore., and San Diego, were unveiled Nov. 2. According to authorities, Ryan and the company he founded, TCNISO, developed […]

Microsoft announced Nov. 3 that it has two new premium editions of SQL Server 2008 R2 in store for users and remains on track to release a community technology preview for the database in November. At the PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) Community Summit, in Seattle, Ted Kummert, Microsoft’s senior vice president of the […]

In its biannual snapshot of the security landscape, Microsoft has uncovered a resurgence a worms that underscores the importance of having sound security guidelines for removable USB devices accessing corporate networks. While Volume 7 of Microsoft’s Security Intelligence Report found that Trojans were the top malware threat for U.S. enterprises during the first six months […]

With more employees operating outside the workplace, solving the problem of web filtering for remote workers has gotten attention from a number of security vendors. Addressing it has led some vendors to push a hybrid approach of cloud-based and on-premise technology – something that may gain traction as enterprises look to deal with their mobile […]