Dennis Fisher

Four years ago, the intrusion prevention system market consisted of a few next-generation intrusion detection system appliances with elementary blocking capabilities. Most vendors and analysts at the time said IPSes would remain a minor offshoot of the IDS segment, mainly because administrators were loath to run appliances that could block network traffic actively. Those predictions, […]

Security industry veteran and itinerant hacker Peiter Zatko decided this week to rejoin Internet pioneer BBN Technologies Inc. as a research scientist. Better known in security circles as Mudge, Zatko was one of the founding members of the L0pht Heavy Industries hacking team that later became the technical heart of @stake Inc. He left @stake […]

Virus writers have once again gotten the drop on anti-virus vendors and IT administrators with a new technique thats finding early and considerable success. Late last month, administrators and service providers began seeing virus-infected messages with a new type of attachment hitting their mail servers: an .rar archive. .Rar files are similar to .zip files […]

As the larger security vendors begin rolling out first-generation reputation services in their anti-spam systems, CipherTrust Inc. this week plans to introduce Version 3.0 of its TrustedSource reputation service, which can now assign a reputation to any IP address on the Internet. The system, an upgrade to the software on the companys IronMail appliances, works […]

Computer Associates International Inc. last week acknowledged its plans to reorganize around a business unit structure and move two top executives into new roles, but at least one of those changes may be temporary. “The business unit structure has proven itself an incredibly effective model in this industry and is a natural next step for […]

Sun Microsystems Inc. this week plans to unveil a new piece of its expanding identity management product designed to help customers get a handle on ever-increasing audit and regulatory compliance requirements. Federal and state regulations, including HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act); the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; and the California Security Breach Information Act, or SB […]

In the last year, the Secure Sockets Layer VPN market has exploded, going from a niche in the larger VPN sector to a pervasive technology now deployed in many of the worlds largest networks. Aventail Corp., of Seattle, one of SSL VPNs pioneers, has been at the forefront of this push into the enterprise and […]

The sudden resignation of Department of Homeland Security section chief Robert Liscouski, paired with the introduction of a new bill in the U.S. House to give more authority to the countrys top cyber-security official, could help pave the way for the DHS to attract a senior IT executive better equipped to improve federal information security […]

A group of security volunteers on Tuesday released a new version of an advanced open-source framework for developing, testing and using exploits. The Metasploit Framework 2.3 is the latest evolution of a project that began as a lark and has turned into a serious tool for penetration testing and exploit development. The framework, which is […]

Robert Liscouski, the man in charge of the section of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for cyber-security, has decided to leave the department and head for the greener pastures of the private sector. Liscouski is the assistant secretary of the Information Assurance and Infrastructure Protection directorate at the DHS, which includes the National Cyber […]

Although some ISPs and legislators are crediting the year-old CAN-SPAM Act and better technology for recent gains in the war on spam, many in the industry say the advances are forcing spammers to employ new tactics, which are destabilizing the Internets crucial DNS. One troublesome technique finding favor with spammers involves sending mass mailings in […]

Mcafee Inc.s Foundstone professional services group this week will unveil a sophisticated tool designed to help enterprises use Google to discover any sensitive information about the company that might have leaked onto the Internet. The tool, called SiteDigger 2.0, is an upgrade to a utility program written by Foundstone consultants before McAfee acquired the company […]