Fahmida Y. Rashid

Ericsson Buys BelAir Networks With Eye Toward Mobile Broadband

Ericsson is acquiring Canadian WiFi provider BelAir Networks in an effort to expand the company€™s mobile broadband portfolio and improve its offerings for customers. The acquisition, which the company announced Feb. 21, will give Ericsson a carrier-grade WiFi portfolio, technology expertise, intellectual-property rights and established customer relationships. While neither company disclosed the financial details, Ericsson […]

Stock Exchanges

Stock Exchanges The Websites of the NASDAQ and BATS stock exchanges as well as the Chicago Board Options Exchange were knocked offline for parts of Feb. 13 and Feb. 14. The DDoS attacks did not affect trading systems, just the public-facing nasdaq.com, nasdaqtrader.com, batstrading.com and cboe.com. “LONGwave99” claimed credit for “Operation Digital Tornado” although some […]

McAfee, Xerox Partner on Printer Security

Concerned that employees are not taking IT security policies seriously, McAfee and Xerox are teaming up to protect sensitive data stored on office printers. Yet another survey found that employees are either not aware of their company’s security policies or not bothering to follow them. More than half of employees didn’t always follow their organization’s […]

Software Patches, Nortel, User Privacy Top Week’s Security News

Patches were on every administrator’s mind this week, as Microsoft, Adobe, Google, Oracle and Mozilla all released security updates. Microsoft fixed 21 vulnerabilities, of which XXX was critical, as part of its February Patch Tuesday. This month’s patches were unusual in the number of vulnerabilities fixed in newer versions of Internet Explorer and Windows. Adobe […]

Mac OS X ‘Mountain Lion’s’ Gatekeeper Not Enough to Fight Malware

Apple and Microsoft have added security features to the next versions of their respective operating systems in an effort to combat new, more complicated security threats. However, security experts remain skeptical the steps taken would be enough against these malware threats. On Feb. 16, Apple previewed the new Gatekeeper security feature for its new operating […]

Google, Mozilla Fix Serious Graphics Library Flaw in Chrome, Firefox

Google and Mozilla€”just days after fixing multiple security flaws in their Web browsers€”have updated their products again to fix a serious bug that could result in remote code execution. On Feb. 17, Mozilla fixed an integer overflow bug in the libpng graphics library used by its Firefox Web browser and Thunderbird mail client. Google fixed […]

Secret Service Shuts Down, Then Reinstates JotForm

Two days after the U.S. Secret Service shut down online forms site JotForm for unspecified reasons, the company is back online. However, JotForm still doesn’t know why law enforcement decided to shut down its site in the first place. The Secret Service shut down JotForm Feb. 15 by ordering domain name registrar GoDaddy to remove […]

Nortel Breach Highlights Security Vulnerabilities of All Enterprises

The decade-long security breach at Nortel that exposed thousands of company documents is just one example of how vulnerable corporations are to cyber-espionage. What’s even more worrisome is the likelihood that many businesses have been breached and are unaware of it, security experts said. Industrial espionage is not new, as perpetrators try to bridge technology […]

Foursquare, Twitter Guilty of Slurping User Data: Report

Several popular online services, including Foursquare and Twitter, are guilty of slurping up large amounts of personal data through their mobile applications without getting explicit permission from users. Now that they have been caught, these iOS developers, along with Apple, are promising to start warning users first. On Feb. 8, Arun Thampi, a software developer, […]

Android Malware Grew 3,000 Percent in 2011: Report

Malware that specifically targeted mobile operating systems increased in 2011 as smartphones became more popular with enterprise users, as well as consumers. These cyber-criminals also developed affection for the Google Android OS, which saw the biggest jump in malware during the past 12 months, according to a new report from Juniper Networks. Malware targeting the […]