Stories about: Predictive Systems

Like cancer used to be among friends in the 1960s, security is taboo as a discussion topic among many CIOs today. Superstitious IT executives keep quiet about the subject and hope it will go away. They rarely seek out colleagues to compare notes about managing technology vulnerabilities and the mitigation of risk.

Over the last eight months major new hacker tools have been released or revealed, ending a lull in activity among hackers that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the enactment of legislation that enhanced law enforcement's ability to prosecute people who break code and wreak havoc on networks by exploiting software vulnerabilities, hacking consultant Ed Skoudis said Thursday.

Like a lot of other security professionals these days, Mike Hager, security chief at OppenheimerFunds Distributor Inc. in New York, is under excruciating pressure to provide top-notch protection of data, ensure privacy and manage user access -- all on a drum-tight budget. He also needs to justify all project costs and results to top management.

The exodus began in December. Bruce Moulton, vice president of infrastructure risk management at Fidelity Investments in Boston, was let go. That same month, Steve Katz, chief security and privacy officer at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York, accepted a buyout. And in April, shortly after his face appeared on the cover of CIO magazine, Michael Young, chief information security officer and principal privacy officer at State Street Global Advisors in Boston, lost his job in a company reshuffle.

The U.S. Department of the Interior is slowly getting back online after a federal judge last week ordered all of the department's computers to be disconnected from the Internet.

A new program that would speed up the process for approving H-1B visas for foreign workers but would also charge an extra fee is drawing praise and criticism among those involved in immigration issues.

ORLANDO (03/06/2001) - As hackers obtain ever more dangerous and easy-to-use tools, they are being countered by novel defense strategies. Witness the experimental idea of setting up a decoy network separate from your real one to fool intruders as they try to fool you.

Even with strong security, e-business risk is a fact of life in today's interconnected business world. But the fundamental problem with managing this new form of business risk, say IT managers, is that there are no metrics and no standards to measure the level of risk.

In the wake of a massive DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on major U.S. Web sites last year, users are clearly moving to outsourced MSS (management security services) for protection.

British police arrested three men last week who allegedly attempted to rob an online bank, London-based Egg PLC.

Since 1990, the Open Shortest Path First protocol has enabled routers to govern the IP networks. The OSPF protocol applies to routing, which allows everything else on a network to work.