security

Features

• Mobile malware: Beware drive-by downloads on your smartphone

  By Meridith Levinson | 23 March, 2012 07:39

  While Jeff Schmidt, the CEO of JAS Global Advisors, was surfing the Web on his new Android smartphone (his first Android phone) earlier this year, what appeared to be an ad popped up on his screen. The "ad" looked like the prompt that appears when his phone rings. He clicked the button on the ad to pick up the putative call, and the ad began downloading a binary file - malware - onto his Android phone. Schmidt had been hit by a drive-by download, a program that automatically installs malicious software on end-users' computers--and increasingly, smartphones--without them knowing.

• Guide: How to be ready for Big Data

  By Thor Olavsrud | 21 March, 2012 01:30

  Big Data is all the rage these days, and more than a few organizations are at least wondering what sort of business intelligence they could derive from all the information at their disposal.

• 13 security myths you'll hear - but should you believe?

  By Ellen Messmer | 15 February, 2012 09:32

  They're "security myths", oft-repeated and generally accepted notions about IT security that arguably are simply not true - in order words, it's just a myth. We asked security experts, consultants, vendors and enterprise security managers to share their favorite "security myths" with us. Here are 13 of them.

• 2011's biggest security snafus

  By Ellen Messmer | 02 December, 2011 06:27

  Perhaps it was an omen of what was to come when the city of San Francisco on New Year's Eve 2010 couldn't get a backup system running in its Emergency Operations Center because no one knew the password.

• Guide: How to bulletproof your website

  By Esther Shein | 29 November, 2011 03:32

  'Tis the season to begin ramping up online shopping activity, and for retailers that means doing all they can to ensure their websites are up, highly available and able to handle peak capacity. Looming in many IT managers' minds is the cautionary tale of Target, whose website crashed twice after it was inundated by an unprecedented number of online shoppers when the retailer began selling clothing and accessories from high-end Italian fashion company Missoni.

• Hackers target IPv6

  By Susan Perschke | 28 November, 2011 22:32

  If your IPv6 strategy is to delay implementation as long as you can, you still must address IPv6 security concerns right now.

• Want better Wi-Fi? Five things you need

  By Logan G. Harbaugh | 27 October, 2011 08:27

  Laptops used to be the only devices on the company's wireless network. But Wi-Fi has become a ubiquitous standard used by a host of devices -- including desktop PCs, laptops, netbooks, tablets, smartphones, printers, storage devices, and projectors.

• Gartner: The top 10 strategic technology trends for 2012

  By Michael Cooney | 19 October, 2011 04:41

  ORLANDO -- The technology that makes up many of the systems in the ITworld today is at a critical juncture and in the next five years everything from mobile devices and applications to servers and social networking will impact IT in ways companies need to prepare for now, Gartner Vice President David Cearley says.

• Bad new world - Cyber risk and the future of the US

  By Michael Assante | 23 September, 2011 05:21

  In September 2007, in a remote laboratory in Idaho, researchers began to show that that picture had begun to change, dramatically and irreversibly. Dubbed "Aurora," the researchers' project demonstrated the ability of a cyber hacker to destroy physical equipment--in this case a generator used to create electricity for the power grid.

• Security breach

  By Matt Rodgers | 22 September, 2011 09:00

  No company wants to be associated with a data breach, but if your systems are compromised the fallout can sometimes be more damaging than the act itself.

• Has RIM's BlackBerry had its day in the enterprise?

  By Mark Phillips | 16 August, 2011 08:36

  They were once ubiquitous in the workplace, as much a symbol of executive status as the gold standard in enterprise mobile communications. Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry devices held all the corporate aces and with unrivalled high-end security features, their appeal to and grip on the enterprise sector seemed impregnable.

• Cloud security: how to protect your data

  By CSO staff | 14 June, 2011 21:17

  To use Cloud computing securely requires companies to know where their data is stored and who has access to it. Ironically, the reason Cloud is so popular is because organisations don't want to worry about these details.

  So can the issue be solved by adhering to standards? Increasing legislation? Maybe we need a global technical disaster to ‘sober up’ an industry drunk on the power of Moore's Law.

• Top 10 hacking movies

  By Computerworld Staff | 18 April, 2011 10:38

  2011 so far has been filled with news of high-profile hacking - the Epsilon data breach, Microsoft and the various attempts of the nefarious Anonymous. Even the Australian Government copped a little unwanted interest. With this in mind, we thought it was time to track down the top ten Hollywood movies about hacking.

• Apple iOS: Why it's the most secure OS, period

  By Robert Lemos | 06 June, 2011 20:04

  In June 2007, Apple released the iPhone, and the device quickly took off to become a major brand in the smartphone market. Yet when the iPhone shipped, security on the mobile operating system was nearly nonexistent. Missing from the initial iOS (then called iPhone OS) were many of the security features that modern-day desktop software has as a matter of course, such as data-execution protection (DEP) and address-space layout randomization (ASLR). Apple's cachet lured security researchers to test the platform, and in less than a month, a trio had released details on the first vulnerability: an exploitable flaw in the mobile Safari browser.

• Internal security top of mind for AusCERT

  By Hamish Barwick | 18 April, 2011 12:52

  When a delegate list includes people from the US Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS), AusCERT 2011 organisers know all too well that their security may be tested.