• To avoid cyberwar and protect infrastructure -- fight cybercrime first

    Fighting cybercrime is the first step to avoiding cyberwar, protecting infrastructure; Christopher Painter, the White House’s senior director for cybersecurity: “There are a couple of things we need to do to harden [critical infrastructure] targets” — “But the other thing you need to do is reduce the threat. And the predominant threat we face is the criminal threat — the cybercrime threat in all of its varied aspects”

  • Cybersecurity companies weather the economic downturn

    Cybersecurity companies may have suffered during the economic downturn — but they suffered less; some companies even saw an increase in revenues; “The things that we’re delivering have become more of a necessity than a nice to have,” says the president of an Iowa-based company which provides technical support and corporate security for desktop computers — and which increased its annual revenue by 41 percent in 2009

  • IT experts: Security risks of cloud computing outweigh benefits

    Cloud computing services are expected to experience dramatic growth, hitting $44.2 billion by 2013, outpacing traditional IT spending; other estimates, including a recent study by Global Industry Analysts, indicate that by 2015 cloud computing services could represent a more than $200 billion market opportunity; still, worries about the security of cloud computing linger: 45 percent of IT professionals responding to an ISAAC survey say the risks of cloud computing outweigh the lower total cost of ownership (TCO), high return on investment (ROI), increased efficiency, and pay-as-you-go services

  • FCC to move forward with national broadband plan

    FCC will move forward on the with key recommendations in its national broadband plan — even though a federal appeals court this week undermined the agency’s legal authority to regulate high-speed Internet access; plan calls for advancing “robust and secure public safety communications networks”

  • U.S. government encounters shortage of skilled cyber-security workers

    DHS and the FBI, among other government agencies, are now posting job openings in cybersecurity, describing the chief responsibilities of these jobs as preserving the nation’s freedoms and securing the homeland; the recruitment campaign is going slowly because the pool of truly skilled security professionals is a small one, and the government is only the latest suitor vying for their talents

  • Federal IT professionals: Cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure looming

    More than half of federal IT professionals surveyed believe the potential is “high” for a cyberattack from a foreign nation against critical IT infrastructure in the next year; moreover, 42 percent of them think the U.S. government’s ability to prevent or handle such an attack is merely fair to poor.

  • Cybercriminals exploit search engine optimization techniques

    Cybercriminals have another tool at their disposal: search engine optimization (SEO); hackers use automated kits to apply blackhat SEO methods — cynically exploiting tragic or salacious breaking news stories — to subvert searches in order to point surfers toward scareware download portals or other scams

  • FAA bolsters cybersecurity with help from IBM

    Malware introduced into the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) computer network which monitors and controls U.S. aviation can bring down a plane and cause havoc as surely as liquid explosives or underwear bombs can; the IBM is teaming up with the FAA to build a cybersecurity system which will improve defense against cyberattacks on the U.S. civilian aviation network; the flexible model used in the prototype system will be designed to look retrospectively at event occurrences and system compromises, and it will also be able to correlate historical traffic patterns with dynamic data from monitors, sensors, and other devices capturing information about network traffic and user activity in real time

  • U.S. cybersecurity spending to rise

    The rate of cyberattacks on U.S. government’s networks and U.S. critical infrastructure, and the growing complexity of IT infrastructure, are driving the surge in federal cybersecurity spending; the U.S. federal government’s total cumulative cybersecurity spending would be $55 billion between 2010 and 2015

  • Experts say smart meters are vulnerable to hacking

    In the United States alone, more than eight million smart meters have been deployed by electric utilities and nearly sixty million should be in place by 2020; security experts are worried that this rush to deployment of smart meters ignores serious security vulnerabilities: the interactivity which makes smart meters so attractive also makes them vulnerable to hackers, because each meter essentially is a computer connected to a vast network

  • Top U.S. cyber official: cyber threat poses existential threat to U.S.

    Senior Obama administration official: “I am convinced that given enough time, motivation and funding, a determined adversary will always — always — be able to penetrate a targeted system”; as a result: “The cyber threat can be an existential threat — meaning it can challenge our country’s very existence, or significantly alter our nation’s potential”

  • iPhone, IE8, Firefox, and Safari easily hacked at Pwn2Own contest

    Hackers gathered for an annual contest in Vancouver demonstrate easy hacking of iPhone and all major browsers; a non-jailbroken iPhone was also hacked and its SMS database stolen; security measures taken by Firefox, Safari, and IE8 no match for hackers

  • Israeli scientist invents a laser-based security tool for the CIA -- and for online shoppers

    When the RSA system for digital information security was introduced in the 1970s, the researchers who invented it predicted that their 200-bit key would take a billion years to crack; well, it was cracked five years ago; it is still the most secure system for consumers to use today when shopping online or using a bank card, but as computers become increasingly powerful, the idea of using the RSA system becomes more fragile; the solution lies in a new kind of system to keep prying eyes off secure information

  • DHS to work with ISP to test Einstein 3 cyber security system

    DHS will work with a commercial ISP to test the partially classified Einstein 3 system; Einstein 3 is designed to do real-time, deep packet inspection and threat-based decision making on data traffic entering or leaving federal agency networks

  • The Norton Top 10: Seattle is the riskiest U.S. city for cybercrime; Detroit is the safest

    A study of the cybercrime-proneness of fifty American cities finds that from the perspective of cybersecurity, Seattle is the riskiest city in America: If you live and work there and use the Internet, your are more vulnerable to cybercrime than in any other place; the cyber-safest cities: Detroit, Michigan, El Paso, Texas, and Memphis, Tennessee