Brian Prince

The saga that is the WikiLeaks controversy dominated security news this past week as governments around the world dealt with the fallout from the breach and the site dealt with denial-of-service attacks. WikiLeaks’ posting of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables online for many highlighted insider security and forced a re-examination of security policies by the […]

Google patched 13 security flaws in the latest release of its Chrome browser. The flaws ran the gamut from a possible pop-up blocker bypass to a use-after-free vulnerability with SVG animations that is considered by Google to be high risk. All totaled, the new release includes 800 bugs and stability improvements. In addition to the […]

BMC Software announced Dec. 3 it acquired database automation specialist GridApp Systems in a bid to extend its system management portfolio to the database layer. Founded in 2002, GridApp focuses on automating database provisioning, patching and administration. The GridApp solution is already integrated with BMC BladeLogic Server Automation, and cuts cost, complexity and risk associated […]

A new report by Forrester Research predicts the network access control (NAC) market will increasingly shift to a new model called “layered access control.” In “Network Access Control Predictions: 2011 And Beyond,” the analyst firm describes a future where NAC encompasses not only the network, but also applications and mobile device access control. “Corporate may […]

Failing to protect laptops with a mix of technology and policy can be costly, and a new survey showed just how much. The survey, dubbed “The Billion Dollar Lost-Laptop Study,” was conducted by Intel and the Ponemon Institute and fielded input from 329 public and private organizations. During the past 12 months, those respondents collectively […]

A survey of critical infrastructure companies by Enterprise Strategy Group reported that the companies with the most industry regulations to address tended to have better security practices, something that did not strike me as all that surprising. What did strike me as somewhat surprising, though, is some of the things people agreed the government should […]

The main distribution server of the open-source ProFTPD Project was compromised in an attack that enabled whoever was behind it to upload and distribute a malicious version of ProFTPD software. The ProFTPD Project develops file transfer protocol (FTP) server software. According to the project team, the compromise occurred Nov. 28, and went undetected until Dec. […]

The FBI has linked a 23-year-old Russian man to the notorious Mega-D botnet, which once was responsible for one-third of the world’s spam. According to federal authorities, Oleg Nikolaenko was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to use Mega-D to spam out e-mails for a crew of criminals specializing in the sale of fake goods. […]

ParAccel is pushing high-performance analytics in the latest version of its database. In PADB (ParAccel Analytic Database) 3.0-due for general release later this month-organizations can expect a number of enhancements meant to improve speed and performance, said Michael Weir, senior director of marketing for the company. “PADB extensible analytics ports highly sophisticated analytics natively into […]

Just last month, Adobe Systems released the latest version of Reader with a new sandboxing approach to improve security. Today, the company announced it has partnered with Google to extend that protection to Flash Player users running the Google Chrome browser. Google has long trumpeted sandboxing as an extra protective layer against attacks, and has […]