Articles by Jack M. Germain

James Van Dyke had a hunch last year that the commonly held belief that the Internet was causing an increase in identity theft and credit card fraud was not valid. Extensive research he conducted debunks many of the myths about the correlation between online activity and ID theft Contrary to popular opinion, Van Dyke, a research analyst for Javelin...

With the growing demand for always-on high-speed Internet access, consumer-grade firewall boxes are becoming as common in computing as modems and mice. The prevalence of these devices makes sense, as network security and protection against intruders have become topics of great concern for home-office telecommuters as well as for IT staff in upscale corporations...

Microsoft officials are promising computer users more help in solving security threats that have plagued users of the company's best-known products. But Microsoft will rely on third-party vendors to provide at least some of the solutions. Microsoft announced its new strategies for securing its products in a series of low-key media advisories and keynote addresses earlier this month...

It seemed like a no-brainer for Microsoft: Use its massive software market share to win over game players to its Xbox console. It could sell a powerful, graphics-enhanced computer for about US$180 and sit back as the dollars rolled in from royalties paid by its partners for every Xbox game sold According to Microsoft's vision, the plan to practical...

Internet security experts are divided on the source and purpose of computer viruses and worms like Blaster and SoBig. But some government agencies are investigating a possible connection between the increasing spread of infected computers and organized crime Recent trends are leading many experts to worry that malicious code buried in infected comp...

Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, is an old technology that has been quietly revolutionizing business and industry. Back in World War II, the British used RFID signals to confirm the identity of their own aircraft in flight. Today, RFID has permeated our society. It is used to track everything from pets to prisoners to products Over the past...

The power blackout that struck the northern United States and Canada in August shocked industry executives into acknowledging the need to upgrade outdated circuitry and power-generating equipment However, analysts and security experts now are warning that the outmoded, intrusion-prone computers used to control the grid pose a greater risk than the ...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced in September that 27.3 million Americans have fallen victim to identity theft in the past five years. About half of those thefts took place last year. According to the FTC report, the thefts resulted from several outlets that include credit cards, ATM machines and the Internet. These thefts caused billions of dollars in losses for businesses and consumers...

Internet security experts are divided on the source and purpose of computer viruses and worms like Blaster and SoBig. But some government agencies are investigating a possible connection between the increasing spread of infected computers and organized crime Recent trends are leading many experts to worry that malicious code buried in infected comp...

Microsoft's .NET Passport, one of the largest online authentication services in operation, has more than 200 million active accounts and handles more than 4 billion authentications per month, Adam Sohn, product manager for the Platform Strategy Group at Microsoft, told TechNewsWorld. As a whole, Microsoft's .NET Passport service is a collection of...

Computer hobbyists for years have tweaked their computers' innards to squeeze out extra bits of performance. Known as overclocking, the practice has long been a holy grail to users who demand maximum performance from their systems Overclocking does pose hazards to computer hardware, which is largely the reason that business users have not tradition...

Biometric security devices -- which authenticate a person's identity on the basis of physical characteristics, such as a fingerprint -- have been available in one form or another for 30 years. But biometrics technology for computer security and user authentication might never achieve widespread use, analysts told TechNewsWorld, because of the predominant perception that it is costly, inconvenient and intrusive...

Analysts credit advance warning about the Blaster worm, in addition to Microsoft's clever rewriting of standard Internet-connection protocols, as the weapons used in defeating a denial-of-service (DoS) attack against the software company's Windows help Web site on August 16th The Blaster worm, which infected more than one million computers worldwid...

Last month Microsoft Research hosted a summit of some of the best minds in academia to discuss major computing problems and find areas for mutually beneficial collaboration. Held during the last week in July, the gathering brought together 340 academic researchers representing 115 institutions in 11 countries An annual event, the summit has become ...

The SoBig.E worm, released two months ago on the Internet, continues to spread from unprotected computers. Some Internet security analysts fear that this latest variant of the SoBig family -- much like possible future variants of the new Microsoft Blaster or LovSan worm that began to proliferate early this week -- will cause long-term threats to Internet security...