Security

EXPERT ADVICE

The 'Visual Yield' of Information Security

Over the holiday weekend, a family friend introduced us to a great concept we hadn't heard before: The concept of "visual yield." It's a concept that I think anybody who's ever been involved in a home improvement project can understand and appreciate -- and it has more to do with information securi...

Cybercrime is pervasive, pandemic and increasingly connected with other parts of the criminal ecosystem. It ranges from the theft of an individual's identity to the complete disruption of a country's Internet connectivity due to a massive attack against its networking and computing resources. This i...

The idea was to provide some clarity on the issue of searches of computers and other digital devices when travelers enter the U.S. However, while Thursday's announcement of new Department of Homeland Security policies for border inspections was greeted as a good first step by some, they didn't compl...

Facebook will be overhauling its privacy policy following an investigation by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which concluded that the social networking site's policies posed significant risks. The changes will affect Facebook's entire global user base. The investigation was orig...

Without a doubt, the growth of social networking has exploded in recent years and has added value to the Internet by providing yet another exciting way for citizens all over the world to connect and interact. In fact, social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and many smaller sites h...

In a move that might finally open a moneymaking channel for the company, Twitter announced on Thursday that it will launch a geolocation feature as part of its microblogging service. It will also offer a new API so developers can add latitude and longitude data to any tweet. Developers will be given...

THIS WEEK IN TECH

A Last Call for Snarkers Anonymous?

The old saying used to be, "If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all." Then the Internet came along, and the saying changed to, "If you can't say anything nice, then invent a fake user name and go to town." The Web has allowed us to get away with saying some pretty awful things...

Someone, somewhere did not like Liskula Cohen, a model in her 30s who lives in New York. A blog was launched from Google's Blogger platform, apparently devoted to maligning her, complete with uncomplimentary photos. To be sure, such online attacks are hardly rare; indeed, Cohen's story diverges from...

The security of any given computer system is no better than the skills researchers bring to finding the next potential program flaw. Network security workers concentrate on updating patches and making sure only validated users can access the corporate LAN. Meanwhile, security researchers hunt for ex...

EXPERT ADVICE

Maybe the Policy Is the Problem

Imagine for a moment one of your company's employees getting out of their car and arriving at your office building. It doesn't really matter who it is, but for the sake of visualizing the scene more clearly, assume it's someone conservative and maybe a bit socially inept. Maybe it's one of the "su...

Cybersecurity is a shambles in the U.S., but nobody seems able to do anything about it, and things appear to be going from bad to worse. Both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama have promised to appoint a cybersecurity czar -- or "cybersecurity coordinator," as the current administration calls the p...

For the second time in less than a week, Twitter has been hit by a distributed denial of service attack. Unlike the first attack last week, the latest cyberassault, which started on Tuesday, has been confined to Twitter so far -- Facebook has apparently not been affected. That has led Roger Thompson...

IE6: Dead Browser Walking

Google's social network Orkut reportedly plans to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6, igniting a long-simmering debate over continued use of the 8-year-old version of the browser. The current version is IE8. Microsoft intends to maintain support for IE6 in conjunction with its support for Win...

OPINION

Apple and Google on Brain Vacation

Summer is a time to relax, a time to take a vacation, a time to do things you can't do during the work year. However, I'm not sure any time is a good time to send your brain on vacation, and I'm starting to wonder if the leaders at Google and Apple have done just that. Granted, Steve Jobs has a goo...

If you were unable to log on to Twitter or Facebook Thursday morning, you can consider yourself collateral damage in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia. Facebook has confirmed that a pro-Georgian blogger was the target of a widespread distributed denial of service attack that hit the to...

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