Security

Nest CEO Tony Fadell took on one of the many lingering questions about Google's $3.2 billion acquisition of the company: What will become of its privacy policy? Any changes to Nest's privacy policy will be opt-in, and the company will be "transparent" about those changes to its users, Fadell promise...

More than 100,000 Internet-connected home consumer devices, including a refrigerator, spammed enterprises and consumers worldwide for about two weeks, between Dec. 23 and Jan. 6, according to security firm Proofpoint. The devices were part of a botnet that sent out 750,000 spam emails, the company c...

Following reports of adware being distributed through extensions for Google's Web browser Chrome, the search giant has removed two applets from it its online store. Pulled from the Chrome Web Store were "Add to Feedly" and "Tweet This Page." Both extensions were mentioned in a Friday report about ...

Further proof that the NSA surveillance scandal is impacting the United States IT industry came on Friday with the publication of a study conducted for Canadian Web hosting and cloud services provider Peer1 Hosting. Fully 64 percent of the 300 UK- and Canada-based respondents to the survey hoped to ...

With all the headlines about Internet cybersecurity breaches, there seem to be few headlines about the consequences for cybercriminals. That is because not all cybercriminals are caught, and when they are it often takes months, if not years, before trials. Even when the cybercriminals plead guilty,...

The security breach that initially appeared to affect as many as 40 million customers may put many more at risk, Target revealed Friday. In addition to accessing those customers' payment card data, hackers stole the names, mailing addresses, phone numbers or email addresses for up to 70 million peop...

Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates in the United States rejoiced when U.S. Federal District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled last month that the NSA's collection of bulk telephony metadata is likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, their joy was short-li...

The NSA's surveillance of Americans' emails, Web searches and phone calls has angered the nation, but lawmakers remain divided on the issue. Bipartisan groups have spoken out against the surveillance and a few have introduced legislation to curb it, but some contend it is essential to protect Americ...

As most security and compliance pros already know, PCI 3.0 is now officially out. The specific changes it includes have already been covered in quite a bit of detail elsewhere in the industry press, so I won't cover them all again here. However, one area that is often less discussed is how to use th...

Target has disclosed that 40 million customer accounts might have been accessed by hackers between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15. Customer names, credit and debit card numbers, card expiration dates and the three-digit security codes on the backs of cards were compromised when they were swiped through machine...

Sen. Edward Markey plans to soon introduce legislation that will restrict the bulk collection of Americans' cellphone data by U.S. law enforcement agencies. "We need a 4th Amendment for the 21st century," he said. "Disclosure of personal information from wireless devices raises significant legal and...

Microsoft is taking steps to make its customers' data more secure in the wake of revelations about government spying. The company was implicated in National Security Agency snooping operations after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents related to the agency's activities earlier this...

Akamai Technologies is buying Prolexic, which offers protection against distributed denial of service attacks. The deal, which is expected to close in the first half of 2014, will cost Akamai about $370 million in cash plus the assumption of outstanding unvested options to purchase Prolexic stock. "...

The United States National Security Agency reportedly has seeded 50,000 networks worldwide with malware designed to steal sensitive information. The report -- the latest in a series of published disclosures based on documents released by Snowden -- is likely to fuel the controversy raging around cyb...

LG Electronics on Thursday said it is preparing a firmware update to address concerns over the discovery that some of its smart TVs have been monitoring users' viewing habits and sending the information back to the company without owners' consent. The issue was discovered when UK-based IT consultant...