Brian Prince

IBM’s X-Force is pushing for a reprioritization of security threats. In its end-of-the-year Trend and Risks Report for 2008, released today, the X-Force contends that a key reason a number of critical vulnerabilities that caused alarm in the security community were not wildly exploited in 2008 was economics. Hackers focus first and foremost on threats […]

Data breaches are costly, and they are not getting any cheaper – particularly breaches due to third parties. But data breach costs don’t just come in the form of a line item expense tied to notification. They also come in the form of lost business opportunity, which is far and away the most expensive part […]

A fired Unix engineer stands accused of planting a malware time bomb at the mortgage firm Fannie Mae that had the potential to destroy countless computer files, federal officials said. Rajendrasinh Makwana, 35, of Frederick, Md., was indicted on Jan. 27 for the attempted malware attack. Makwana was an employee for a firm called OmniTech, […]

Clickjacking is not going away. The same week Microsoft announced on Jan. 26 it had put protections against clickjacking in Internet Explorer 8, security researcher Aditya Sood posted on BugTraq on Jan. 29 a new clickjacking advisory for the Google Chrome browser, with a link to a proof of concept. Officials at Google said they […]

Malware Makes Social Networks Less Sociable by Brian Prince What President Barack Obama and Britney Spears Have in Common Obama and Spears joined a number of people whose accounts were compromised when an individual hacked into some of the tools Twitter’s support team uses to help people do things like edit the e-mail address associated […]

OPSWAT is offering customers a new vision of layered security. The company unveiled on Jan. 27 a product called Metascan that combines anti-virus engines from seven different vendors to improve the chances of catching malware infections before they do any damage. Metascan brings together technologies from Kaspersky Lab, CA, ESET, AVG Technologies, VirusBuster, Norman and […]

Officials at Archer Technologies have their eyes set on a rival in the IT governance, risk and compliance space. The company plans to acquire Brabeion Software, a direct competitor of Archer, for an undisclosed sum. According to officials at Archer, the move is meant to bolster the company’s policy management tools by adding Brabeion’s content […]

Websense has announced the acquisition of Defensio, a technology platform focused on stopping spam on social Web sites. The acquisition is meant to extend the content identification and classification capabilities of the Websense ThreatSeeker Network by providing visibility into spam posted as comments to social Web sites, including blogs, user forums and social networking sites. […]

As the economy takes body blow after body blow, companies are struggling to do more with less. When it comes to security, however, the cost of not doing enough can be immeasurable. So, just how low can companies go? For many companies, slashed budgets have forced a reassessment of priorities as well as some creative […]

Users of pirated software have a new headache to worry about. For the second time in less than two weeks, malware targeting Mac computers has surfaced on the Web. According to an advisory from Intego, OSX.Trojan.iServices.B is a variant of the iServices Trojan the company found last week targeting pirated copies of iWork ’09. This […]