Brian Prince

When data breaches occur, strong leadership from the chief information security officer can make a difference in the damage done to your corporate budget, according to new research from the Ponemon Institute. In its latest look at data breaches the institute found that in the five countries studied (U.S., U.K., Australia, France and Germany), CISO […]

A survey of 638 IT pros suggests many organizations aren’t taking Web application security as seriously as they should be. The survey, performed by the Ponemon Institute and commissioned by Imperva and WhiteHat Security, found that 70 percent of the respondents felt their organizations do not allocate sufficient resources to secure critical Web applications. Some […]

Facebook has once again stirred up privacy concerns, this time in the political arena. Several politicians joined forces April 27 to urge Facebook to change its privacy approach to block third parties from accessing personal information with the users’ consent. Sens. Charles Schumer, Michael Bennet, Al Franken and Mark Begich announced at a news conference […]

Microsoft has rereleased a security update targeting a vulnerability on Windows 2000 Server. The company pulled support for MS10-025 last week. According to Microsoft, the Windows security bulletin failed to properly fix a remote code execution issue tied to the way Windows Media Unicast Service handles specially crafted transport information packets. “Shortly after we released […]

McAfee is offering to repay customers whose Windows PCs were crippled by a buggy update issued last week. According to a statement on its Website, the company will reimburse affected customers and make them eligible for a two-year extension of their existing McAfee subscription free of charge. “If you have already incurred costs to repair […]

Sen. Charles Schumer issued an open letter to the Federal Trade Commission April 26 asking the agency to create guidelines governing what social networks can do with information posted by users. Schumer’s letter follows Facebook’s release April 21 of new tools that share user information between the social network and other Websites. “Hundreds of millions […]

Blippy.com is on the lookout for a chief security officer, following a data leak that exposed some users’ credit card numbers. A social networking site that allows users to share information about their shopping purchases, Blippy found itself in the news the week of April 19 after reports surfaced that user credit card numbers had […]

New research illustrating how attackers can uncover the geolocation of cellular phone users should prompt corporations to begin rethinking their approach to choosing cell phone providers. At the Source Boston conference held April 21 to 23, Don Bailey, a security consultant with iSec Partners, and independent security researcher Nick DePetrillo demonstrated how to exploit weaknesses […]

Microsoft has pulled support for a Patch Tuesday update that fails to properly fix a critical vulnerability on Windows 2000 Server. The company issued MS10-025 earlier this month as part of an 11-bulletin security update for customers. The bulletin was supposed to fix an issue affecting customers running Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 4 who […]

Four users of the social networking site Blippy.com had an unwelcome surprise April 23 when it was discovered that a Google search turned up their credit card information. Blippy.com provides a way for people to post information about their shopping habits-what they buy, how much they spend-to share with friends. The data leak was the […]

Signing up for Facebook is free. But that doesn’t mean attackers will have trouble turning a profit if they get their hands on your user credentials. Just how much money can be made is illustrated by new findings from VeriSign iDefense, which uncovered a cyber-crook on an electronic fraud forum selling 1.5 million Facebook accounts […]

IT administrators affected by the flawed antivirus update pushed out April 21 by McAfee may have a lot of work ahead of them cleaning up computers. But there are some lessons to be learned from the fiasco that admins should file away for the future, experts told eWEEK. IT operations for a number of organizations […]