Sean Michael Kerner

These days, Chuck Archer—who once fought crime for the Federal Bureau of Investigation—is focusing on a new battleground: cyber-space. Archer, who worked for the FBI from 1970 to 1998 and served as assistant director at the agency, is now executive chairman of security firm Covata and offers perspective the security field and his company. Covata […]

A week ago, the advance notification for Microsoft’s February Patch Tuesday promised no Microsoft Internet Explorer patches. At the time, I wrote that it was surprising, especially given that there were no IE patches in January either. I was optimistic that this was the beginning of a new trend, a new era for IE security. […]

The need for stronger forms of authentication that are more robust than simply having a username and password is critical in the modern world. That’s where two-factor authentication comes in—adding a second item that is unique and randomly generated in order to secure authentication. There are multiple vendors and technologies at play in the two-factor […]

During the 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama announced Executive Order 13636 titled, “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity.” After a year of preparation, the result of the executive order is coming to fruition with the release of the new “Cybersecurity Framework” from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In a statement […]

Mozilla is now considering a new addition to its revenue-generating activities by adding sponsored content to users’ new tab page. Currently whenever a Firefox user opens a new tab, the tab is populated with tiles, which are thumbnail screenshots of the user’s most frequently visited sites. A new effort called Directory Tiles will enhance that […]

The war of words about what’s wrong with Bitcoin is rising to new heights this week as questions about potential issues with the Bitcoin protocol and security take center stage. On Feb. 7, Bitcoin exchange site Mt. Gox reported that it was experiencing delays and would be restricting all withdrawals. On Feb. 10, Mt. Gox […]

One of the largest distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) ever seen hit the Internet Feb. 11, cloud security vendor CloudFlare reported. The target was a CloudFlare customer, and the attack appears to have been just shy of 400G bps, Matthew Prince, the company’s CEO, told eWEEK. “We’re still gathering data from all our upstream providers to […]

Microsoft has issued its monthly Patch Tuesday update for February, and unlike Microsoft’s January update, this one has at least one big surprise in it. Before every Patch Tuesday event, Microsoft issues an advance notification to give administrators and users a sneak peek at what is coming. For the February Patch Tuesday advance notification, Microsoft […]

Mozilla Debuts New Australis Interface for Firefox 29 Aurora Browsers by Sean Michael Kerner Firefox Aurora Is Early Release Software Although early adopters and the curious are likely to want to try out the new Firefox Australis interface, it’s important to remember that it’s still alpha software developed by an open community. More Contoured Tabs […]

Compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)—a key requirement for organizations that process and handle electronic payments—is low but improving, according to the findings of a new study from Verizon. Although just 11.1 percent of the companies surveyed were fully compliant with all the requirements of the PCI DSS 2.0 standard […]