Brian Prince

As security threats continue to grow in sophistication, vendors are pounding the pavement with unified tools and promises that their products provide cost-effective and efficient ways to protect data and networks. The emphasis on unified tools is a trend that has accelerated in the past few years through acquisitions and mergers in the security space. […]

Business leaders rank the importance of securing their own data above securing their customers’ data, according to a recent survey of IT executives. Customer data ranks third on the list of items business leaders worry about protecting from data breaches, according to a poll of 649 IT executives for a study by the Ponemon Institute. […]

Security vendor McAfee has a new strategy to plunge deeper into the market for midsize companies. Armed with an expanded sales team and a retooled version of Secure Internet Gateway, McAfee is aiming at better penetration of the security market for businesses with 100 to 1000 users. Calling the market underserved, McAfee’s Darrell Rodenbaugh said […]

The Better Business Bureau has issued a fraud alert regarding the resurgence of a spam attack that targets high-level executives in various industries. The spam e-mails purport to be sent by the BBB in an effort to entice users to click on a malicious link. The SANS Institute reported a similar wave of targeted spam […]

A new variant of the Russian Trojan Gozi is circulating on the Web, this time armed with a keylogging function and the ability to scramble itself so it is difficult to detect by anti-virus software. The Trojan is believed to have been spreading since April 17. Like the original, which was discovered earlier in 2007, […]

The mammoth database system that would be needed under an immigration bill currently being discussed by Congress has security experts thinking about procedures, privacy and protection. The Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (PDF) is a controversial compromise reached by a bipartisan group of senators. The proposed legislation already has many […]

Oracle has released an audit management tool company officials say will help address both regulatory compliance issues and the so-called insider threat facing enterprises. Organizations can use Oracle Audit Vault to centrally manage their database auditing configuration and deploy uniform audit policies, said Vipin Samar, vice president of database security at Oracle. With this release, […]

IBM is offering users of its no-cost DB2 Express-C data server a new paid-support option. The move, announced last week by IBM, made the company the first of the three largest database players to offer an annual support option for the no-cost version of its respective database. The option includes technical support around the clock, […]

Four more defendants have pleaded guilty in federal court to selling more than $19 million in copyrighted software from Rockwell Automation over eBay, bringing the total number of convictions in the case to seven. Eric Neil Barber of Manila, Ark., Phillip Buchanan of Hampton, Ga., Wendell Jay Davis of Las Vegas and Craig J. Svetska, […]

Officials at IBM are throwing verbal haymakers at Oracle as Big Blue touts its successes in the database market. The two database heavyweights alternated between offensive and defensive postures recently after IBM questioned Oracle’s claims of database dominance. “The rapid adoption of DB2 9 would seem to call their claims into question and analysts are […]

Researchers at Datamonitor can give corporations 1.8 million reasons to protect themselves against data breaches. According to the research group’s new report, “Datagate: The Next Inevitable Corporate Disaster?”, the average cost of a data leak incident is $1.82 million. That figure is based on accounts of 23 percent of respondents—the others were unable to track […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture narrowed the number of people whose personal data was exposed on a Web site to 38,700, as agency officials stressed the steps being taken to protect those affected by the situation. The 38,700 people affected were awarded funds through the FSA (Farm Service Agency) or USDA Rural Development. The data […]