Dennis Fisher

The wave of consolidation that has swept through the security industry in the last 18 months has cleared the way for a handful of large, diversified vendors to impose their will on the market for the foreseeable future. At the forefront of this developing story are two companies that, until recently, would not have been […]

Bill Gates used his opening keynote speech at the here Tuesday to preview the next version of Internet Explorer, which has lost a sizable chunk of its market share of late to open-source challenger Firefox. The announcement was a bit unexpected, given that Microsoft Corp. has done little in the way of development or marketing […]

The merged Symantec Corp. and Veritas Software Corp. will become a leader in more than a half-dozen product categories. The post-merger Symantec will be not only a dominant security vendor but also a front-runner in backup, recovery and utility computing. To capitalize on that opportunity, the merged company must integrate two disparate product portfolios, ease […]

Two intrusion prevention system vendors unwrapped high-speed offerings this week, vying for customers at the high end of the IPS market. Sourcefire Inc., best known for its IDS (intrusion detection system) based on the Snort open-source tool, announced the availability of its IS5800 Series IPS appliances, which can run at line speeds as high as […]

A forthcoming paper by a set of Chinese security researchers lays out several newly discovered problems with the SHA-1 hash algorithm, a standard that is used the world over. The paper, written by three researchers at Shandong University in China, describes a series of collisions in the algorithm that can allow attackers to forge digital […]

Leaving little doubt about its commitment to the security market, Cisco Systems Inc. unveiled a host of new and updated solutions under the banner of Adaptive Threat Defense at the RSA Conference here Tuesday. The offerings are part of the companys Self Defending Network strategy and include new security modules for Catalyst switches and application […]

Several security companies will announce new, strong authentication solutions at the RSA Conference this week in San Francisco, including RSA Security Inc., which is introducing its first appliance and a pair of authentication tokens. While RSA expands into the hardware market, VeriSign Inc. and TriCipher Inc., a company that is making its debut at the […]

A group of companies concerned about the spread of phishing, including Microsoft Corp., eBay Inc. and WholeSecurity Inc., have banded together to start a service that will serve as an early-warning network for new attacks. The Phish Report Network is a cooperative effort among all of the involved parties, but the information clearinghouse will be […]

Hewlett-Pachard Co. on Friday announced the release of its long-awaited Virus Throttle software, a small application designed to halt the spread of worms and viruses by limiting the number of outbound connections they can establish. The company also offered a peek at some research that scientists in the HP Labs have done on attack containment […]

John Swainson officially took the reins as CEO of Computer Associates International Inc. on Wednesday, three months after he was named CEO-elect. Swainson takes over from Ken Cron, a CA director, who had served as interim CEO since Sanjay Kumar resigned in April 2004. A veteran of IBM, Swainson joins CA at a time when […]