Spotlight Features

A new trend in extorting money from sports and gambling Web sites isn't going away like security experts had predicted. Online gambling Web sites began receiving e-mail threats in October of last year. The messages contained demands for money to prevent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks t...

Faster, more flexible, less expensive and more functional has been the telecommunications industry's mantra. As soon as one networking technology takes hold, vendors begin pushing another that promises to deliver more functionality, and such a scenario is now unfolding with wireless wide area networ...

Passwords are the first line of defense in almost every company's security scheme. But sometimes they are the weakest link because they can be easily guessed, stolen or otherwise compromised. If a firm wants to keep its information secure, then it needs to put additional security checks in place. Pa...

At the recent RSA conference, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates in his keynote speech predicted traditional passwords are headed for their demise. Any CIO who has walked past a row of desks knows Gates has a point when he says passwords cannot adequately protect security: The number of Post-It notes aff...

The 1990s saw Latin American countries -- like their "developing country" counterparts in Asia -- benefit from large inflows of direct foreign investment as well as mergers-and-acquisitions activity. This tremendous influx of funds was in large part driven by the speculative Internet and telecommuni...

The family of MyDoom e-mail worms remains an active threat because of compromised computer systems and unprotected personal computers even though the virus was programmed to shut down last month. As a result of the prevalent infections, the MyDoom creators still can mobilize a vast network of comput...

The mall's latest fashion trend is not carried at Liz Claiborne, Tommy Hilfiger or J. Crew. Instead, young adults are flocking into Best Buy and Circuit City for the latest accessory: camera phones. The product's low price and convenience have sparked a sales boom: Market research firm In-Stat/MDR, ...

Ahhh-choo! Ahh, lucky you. Every time you are exposed to a virus, your immune system builds resistance to that particular bug. So, why can't we build computers that do the same thing? "If our bodies functioned like computers, we'd be extinct," said Steve Hofmeyr, founder and chief scientist of Sana ...

The evolution of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags into a viable enterprise enabler is almost complete. The pressure put on suppliers by such companies as Wal-Mart and Tescos will, through commercial inertia and economies of scale, ensure the price of individual tags and associated readers ...

Through the years, some malicious computer programs have come to be known as viruses. Dr. Fred Cohen, a principal analyst with market research firm Burton Group, coined the term when he was working as a graduate student at the University of Southern California in the early 1980s. "There was a resemb...