Brian Prince

From data protection to cloud computing to application development, this year’s RSA Conference is keeping an eye toward practical strategies for dealing with today’s cyber-threats. The conference, which will run from March 1 to March 5 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, has expanded this year to include 250 sessions across a total of […]

Phishers targeting Twitter have had a long week. In the past several days, a series of the scams have hit the microblogging service, snaring among others British energy minister Ed Miliband and House of Commons leader Harriet Harman, whose account was used to send a bogus message to fellow U.K. politician Alan Duncan. In Miliband’s […]

Database Security Tips for Enterprises No Title Scope of the ProblemA recent study from Forrester Research highlighted the hurdles enterprises have to face when it comes to securing their databases. Eighty percent of the businesses surveyed said they did not have a database security plan, which should contain information such as the business’ approach to […]

Microsoft is using the law as a weapon to take down the Waledac botnet. According to the company, a federal judge in Virginia issued a temporary restraining order Feb. 22 to cut off 277 Internet domains associated with Waledac in response to a complaint filed by Microsoft. The legal maneuver was the culmination of months […]

The Webcam spying allegations that have rocked Pennsylvania’s Lower Merion School District turned into a verbal sparring match Feb. 24 when a high school administrator offered an emotionally charged rebuttal that the family suing the district said does not constitute a denial of relevant facts. The parents of Harriton High School student Blake Robbins filed […]

Adobe Systems has issued a patch for a critical vulnerability in its Download Manager feature that could be exploited to potentially hijack Windows machines. Adobe’s Download Manager is used to push security patches to Windows computers. It is intended for one-time use and removes itself from the computer after the machine is restarted. However, according […]

Minnesota’s Star Tribune newspaper can add its name to the list of organizations to be hit by a malicious Web advertisement. The ad, which came from a third-party advertising network, sought to rope victims into downloading rogue anti-virus. According to the Star Trib, the culprit was an unauthorized Web advertisement that was “slipped into the […]

“The Federal Trade Commission has notified almost 100 organizations that personal information, including sensitive data about customers and/or employees, has been shared” from their computers via peer-to-peer networks, the FTC said in a release Feb. 22. “In the notification letters, [PDF] the agency urged the entities to review their security practices”-as well as the practices […]

Intel has acknowledged it was targeted in a “sophisticated” cyber-attack in January, but has not officially linked the incident to a broad attack on Google and other companies. The company disclosed the attack in its annual 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Though Intel stated the attack happened “around the same time” as […]

U.S. analysts have reportedly traced the programming code at the center of the cyber-attack on Google back to its author. According to the Financial Times, the code was created by a Chinese “freelance security consultant.” The consultant, who is not a full-time government worker and is believed not to have taken part in the actual […]

Data warehousing vendor ParAccel is putting an emphasis on high-performance analytics in the upcoming version of its database appliance. According to the company, when it releases ParAccel Database Version 2.5 in the second quarter of 2010, it will be armed with a number of enhancements designed to improve performance. For starters, ParAccel’s advanced query optimizer, […]

The FBI is reportedly investigating a Pennsylvania school district for possible federal law violations in light of a lawsuit filed by the parents of a high school student. According to multiple media reports, the FBI is probing accusations made against the Lower Merion School District by Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa. The […]