Robert Lemos

After the massive data breaches reported by Target, Neiman Marcus and other chain stores, the retail industry has faced plenty of criticism for cyber-security lapses. Yet the health care industry shows signs of having just as big a data security problem, one that places at risk personal information considered even more sensitive than credit-card data, […]

The U.S. House of Representatives passed long-sought-after communications surveillance reform legislation on May 22, but last-minute changes to the bill had one-time supporters criticizing it as weak. The bill (H.R. 3361), also known as the USA Freedom Act, amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, adding restrictions on the use of FISA by […]

While businesses overwhelmingly see insiders as a significant threat, most companies do not have the tools and processes to track access to privileged information, according to a report released this week by the Ponemon Institute. The “Privileged User Abuse and the Insider Threat” report, sponsored by Raytheon, found that more than two-thirds of businesses do […]

Law enforcement agents in 19 countries raided hundreds of residences and arrested more than 90 people in a broad crackdown on the creators and users of a remote access tool known as Blackshades, according to coordinated announcements by both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Union’s Europol. While remote access tools can be […]

Nine well-known retailers and the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) announced on May 14 the formation of a sharing and analysis center aimed at disseminating information about cyber-threats targeting the retail sector. The Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center, or R-CISC, will act as a collection and dissemination point for information about cyber-threats and support its […]

In 2013, ransomware grew to become a significant threat for computer users, as cyber-criminals refined their tactics aimed at turning compromised computers into cash. Like many other trends, ransomware appears to be going mobile, according to security firms. The group behind the Reveton ransomware program, for example, has ported the malware to Android, distributing it […]

Online thieves are expanding their use of malware to steal credit- and debit-card information from point-of-sale systems, easily defeating many defenders’ uneven efforts to keep them out, according to a report released on May 12 by Arbor Networks, a network security firm. While a variety of different types of malware are popular among digital thieves, […]

The number of cloud services used by corporate employees has dramatically increased in the past quarter, with most of the services not approved by business management, according to data released May 7 by cloud-management firm Skyhigh Networks. The average large company used 759 cloud services as of April 2014, a jump of 21 percent from […]

Microsoft took aim at deceptive software in its latest semi-annual Security Intelligence Report, noting that the addition of two popular, but deceptive, programs to its malware-removal program caused a trebling of the company’s malware detections in the fourth quarter of 2013. The report, released May 7, showed that the number of computers cleaned with Microsoft’s […]

Symantec, the largest seller of endpoint-security software–commonly referred to as antivirus software—grabbed the media spotlight May 5, when an executive told The Wall Street Journal that antivirus “is dead.” Yet the statement is not a repudiation of the technology, as many media outlets have reported, but an acknowledgment that antivirus software is not sufficient for […]