Security

The closer you look, the uglier it gets. More evidence about the Sony hacking has emerged. Apparently, Sony Online Entertainment was part of the target when the Sony PlayStation Network was hacked. SOE handles online multilayer games. The SOE hacking was part of the Sony breach in mid-April that le...

Sony confirmed that its recent site outages were caused by compromised security in a blog post on Tuesday. Between April 17 and 19, hackers gained access to PlayStation Network and Qriocity user account information, the company revealed, and its shutdown of PSN and Qriocity on April 20 was a reactio...

Sony Entertainment has reached a settlement with George Hotz, aka "GeoHot," the hacker who jailbroke Sony's PlayStation 3 gaming console. The settlement was reached on March 31, according to a Sony blog post. The terms were not fully disclosed, but Hotz has apparently agreed to a permanent injunctio...

The world's largest permission-based marketing firm, Epsilon, reported on Friday that its computer system was hacked and an unspecified number of email addresses and names were stolen. Epsilon sends around 40 billion emails a year on behalf of its 2,500 clients, which include major banks such as Cap...

Microsoft and federal law enforcement agents have taken down the Rustock botnet, which had about a million infected computers under its control. The botnet was officially considered offline on Wednesday, according to Microsoft. A botnet consists of an infrastructure of computers that have been hacke...

A coalition of information technology and civil liberties organizations is trying to get ahead of congressional lawmakers and the Obama administration in forging a national cybersecurity policy. Members of the coalition met with congressional staffers last week to brief them on the group's just-rele...

More and more, we are seeing tablets and smartphones becoming integral to user access. Coupled with the ever-increasing burden of managing or even seeking to lower storage costs, this has become a major challenge for IT departments. Public cloud storage -- also known as "Storage as a Service" -- mak...

An 8.9 Richter Scale-magnitude earthquake that hit Japan Friday has technology experts weighing in on the temblor's possible long- and short-term effects on technology in its many incarnations -- from mobile, social networks and cloud computing to WiFi, mainframes and security. Their analysis is cau...

Nasdaq OMX startled the market this weekend with news that it found "suspicious files" on its computer servers. Hackers have apparently infiltrated the stock exchange's computer systems, gaining access to confidential data on the companies that list on Nasdaq. The files were found in the Directors D...

It may be too late to worry about how 2010 impacted us all, but it is not too late to think about how it will shape events this year. In some respects, 2010 was not a year that changed any one course dramatically. Most of 2010 was built around some familiar themes: consolidation, M&A, emerging t...

The world of e-commerce is booming -- but on a parallel track, identity theft, loss of privacy and fraud are skyrocketing as well. While the government has a role in combating Internet security abuses, two top administration officials visited Silicon Valley to emphasize that the private sector needs...

AT&T on Tuesday announced plans to add more public WiFi hotspots in major markets. It has already put one in San Francisco's downtown Embarcadero Center. The wireless giant will also expand its existing Times Square WiFi hot zone and add new ones near Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick's Cathedr...

AT&T on Tuesday announced plans to add more public WiFi hotspots in major markets. It has already put one in San Francisco's downtown Embarcadero Center. The wireless giant will also expand its existing Times Square WiFi hot zone and add new ones near Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick's Cathedr...

AT&T on Tuesday announced plans to add more public WiFi hotspots in major markets. It has already put one in San Francisco's downtown Embarcadero Center. The wireless giant will also expand its existing Times Square WiFi hot zone and add new ones near Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick's Cathedr...

PCI DSS has evolved substantially since the five major credit card holders got together to publish a consolidated security standard in 2006. The standard has been updated regularly with the most recent version, PCI DSS 2.0, released in October 2010. PCI is here to stay, and the requirements are only...