Security

Cyberattacks carried out by hacktivists -- hackers motivated by political reasons -- shot up in 2011, accounting for 58 percent of the data stolen in cyberbreaches, according to Verizon. The company's 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report also stated that 79 percent of the attacks were opportunisti...

The Court of Appeal for Ontario recently considered whether there was a cause of action for the invasion of personal privacy in Jones v.Tsige. The case involved two bank employees, Sandra Jones and Winne Tsige, who worked at two different branches of the same bank. The respondent, Tsige, was in a r...

Dell is acquiring network-security and data-protection tool provider SonicWall for an estimated $1 billion to $1.5 billion. This is the latest in a series of acquisitions Dell has made in recent months. It has acquired Force 10, Perot Systems and SecureWorks. All of these companies focus on differen...

Even before Google launched its new privacy policy earlier this month, consolidating separate privacy policies for more than 60 applications, legal issues had surfaced. Now, attorneys general from more than 31 States have accused Google of violating privacy laws because of complaints from users that...

There is no question that Google is the dominant player in the search engine arena, and a new survey released Friday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 83 percent of U.S. search engine users rated Google as their preferred search engine, despite concerns about the company's d...

I recently read an article about the escalating concerns within a widening array of organizations over the growing security risks associated with today's social networks. Corporate concerns about potential Internet security risks have skyrocketed, not only because of Facebook, Twitter and other pop...

Authorities in the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom and in Ireland, have arrested five suspected hackers affiliated with Lulz Security, more commonly known as "LulzSec," a group of so-called hacktivists. Among those arrested is Hector Xavier Monsegur, the suspected leader of the group...

Google on Tuesday rebuffed a request by a European Union privacy body to delay implementation of changes in the search giant's privacy policies set to take effect on March 1. "[W]e have notified over 350 million authenticated Google users and provided highly visible notifications on our homepage and...

Attorneys General from 36 states have written to Google CEO Larry Page expressing deep concerns over the company's privacy terms. Google's new privacy policy, which permits greater information sharing among its products, should allow consumers to opt in, the attorneys general maintain. Besides lacki...

Top mobile app providers like Apple and Google have sided with California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris to increase privacy protections on mobile apps by providing consumers with more information about the personal data the apps collect. The effort was spearheaded by the California AG in an effo...

These days, cybercriminals are successfully circumventing advanced security controls with the precision of a sniper. In the crosshairs are banks, financial institutions, governments and enterprises. In a recent Gartner survey, 76 U.S. banks indicated that malware-based attacks were a growing problem...

The fallout from changes Google plans to make to its privacy policies and terms of service continues, with consumer advocacy group the Electronic Privacy Information Center suing the Federal Trade Commission over the issue. EPIC is seeking injunctive and other relief to force the FTC to enforce a co...

Verisign has alarmed the online security industry with its reluctant disclosure of repeated hack attacks on its network in 2010. The infrastructure company supports key servers of the Internet's backbone, serving as Top Level Domain host for .com, .org and .gov. That it was repeatedly penetrated in ...

Facebook and Washington state filed federal lawsuits on Thursday against Adscend Media for "clickjacking," a form of spamming that fools users into visiting advertising sites and divulging personal information. "Likejacking" is similar. Users believe links to spam sites are being sent to them by fri...

Both privacy advocates and representatives of businesses that handle consumer data are flocking to Brussels. Why? The EU has proposed a strict set of new data privacy rules that would restrict companies such as Facebook even more than they currently do. Facebook, et al., have descended on the city...