• Preparing for the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat

    One unexpected lesson of the many nuclear tests conducted by the superpowers in the late 1950s and early 1960s was that high-altitude nuclear blasts create far-reaching atmospheric effects that could instantly shut down power grids; as modern life becomes ever-more dependent on electronic gadgets, and as the proliferation of nuclear weapons and missiles continue, fear grows that an adversary will seek to cripple the United States by creating an atmospheric EMP effect

  • Rod Beckstrom to head NCSS

    DHS taps Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur Rod Beckstrom to head new cyber security outfit; Beckstrom’s task is to secure the government IT systems

  • Debate over data security breach insurance continues

    With more and more stories about data security breaches at major companies with millions of customers, the question arises: Should companies, as part of their business continuity plan, take out data security breach insurance? Industry insiders, analysts offer a range of opinions

  • VigilancePro from OpticVision

    VigilancePro offers organizations protection from both internal and external threats; this endpoint security solution allows organizations to set their security and alert policies; it integrates with existing security systems; and it connects physical and digital security to fill the gaps in existing IT security infrastructures

  • TeleContinuity granted Type II carrier license in Japan

    Japan is earthquake prone, so Japanese companies and organizations are especially interested in business continuity and disaster recovery solutions; one innovative communication continuity solution comes from TeleContinuity, and the prediction here is that the Type II carrier license, and a good distribution agreement with ECOSS Japan, would make the company’s products a success in the not-always-easy-to-penetrate Japanese market

  • Advanced software identifies complex cyber network attacks

    By their very nature networks are highly interdependent and each machine’s overall susceptibility to attack depends on the vulnerabilities of the other machines in the network; new software allows IT managers to address this problem

  • More than 4 million credit, debit cards exposed in security breach

    Supermarket chain Hannaford Bros., with 270 stores nationwide, says that a security breach in its system exposed 4.2 million credit and debit cards; 1,800 cases of fraudulent use already detected

  • Serious RFID vulnerability discovered

    A group of a Dutch university’s digital security researchers discovers a major security flaw in a popular RFID tag; discovery can have serious commercial and national security implications; as important as the discovery itself was how the researchers handled the situation

  • MI5 seeks powers to trawl records in new terror hunt

    As part of the Brown government’s new counterterrorism strategy, which places emphasis on thwarting a cyber-attack on the United Kingdom, MI5 seeks total access to commuters’ travel records to help them meet the threat

  • Age-old communication problem solved using quantum entanglement

    One of the major problems in communication is known as the Byzantine agreement: Messages between three different parties are subject to faulty information; researchers succeeded in overcoming the qutrit difficulties by setting up a system that creates four-qubit entangled states

  • Economic barriers to better IT security

    In the real world, investment in risk avoidance may not be profitable; establishing economic incentives for IT suppliers to produce more secure products is a major problem because software publishers are not held liable for the shortcomings of their products; a new paper examines this conundrum

  • U.S. officials: "Cyber Warfare Is Already Here"

    U.S. officials say China, Russia, and possibly other nation-states are capable of collecting or exploiting data held on U.S. information systems; Director of National Intelligence says especially worrisome is the ability of other countries to destroy data in the system: “And the destroying data could be something like money supply, electric power distribution, transportation sequencing and that sort of thing”

  • New consortium to develop safety critical software

    High Integrity and Safety Critical Software (HI&SCS) is “the critical enabling technology” (U.K. Ministry of Defense’s words) for modern defense platforms, network enabled capability, and complex infrastructure; York University to lead a industry-academia consortium to develop such software; consortium will emulate the U.S. Software Engineering Institute

  • Breakthrough: Transcribing entanglement into and out of quantum memory

    Caltech researchers demonstrate for the first time an important capability required for the control of quantum information and quantum networks: Coherent conversion of photonic entanglement into and out of separated quantum memories

  • U.S., U.K. military secrets e-mailed to factory hand

    English factory hand bought a domain name which resembled the domain name of neighboring RAF base; for the last few years he has been receiving thousands of classified and highly sensitive e-mails from the U.S. Air Force — including the flight plan of Air Force One during President Bush’s visit to the U.K.; efforts to have the RAF or USAF address the problem failed; domain finally shut down last week