Security was a big issue in 2011 with more sophisticated and a wider range of threats than ever before wasting even more of everyone's time at a cost of billions of dollars.

When Adobe last week issued an advisory about a dangerous zero-day attack based on an unpatched Adobe Reader vulnerability that was being exploited in the wild to try and seize control of both PCs and Macs, it credited Lockheed Martin for sounding the alarm about it.

Security researchers at Symantec today confirmed that exploits of an unpatched Adobe Reader vulnerability targeted defense contractors, among other businesses.

Biometrics — the security method for identifying an individual by making a match of fingerprints, iris, face, voice, DNA and other unique physical traits — scares people, an industry leader in the field acknowledged this week. But enterprise technology managers say there's no doubt biometrics is a boon to enterprise security.

Science Applications International (SAIC), a subcontractor and two former government employees will pay nearly US$22.7 million to resolve allegations that they rigged bids for a $3.2 billion supercomputing contract with the U.S. General Services Administration, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday.