Stories about: Security Systems

All over Beijing, Olympic countdown clocks tick off the seconds that China has awaited for seven years: the moments until Aug. 8, 2008, at 8:00 pm, when the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics begin.

Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. Previously, we have spoken to Alfred v. Aho of AWK fame, and Chet Ramey about his experience maintaining Bash. In this article, we chat to S. Tucker Taft, Chairman and CTO of SofCheck. Taft has been heavily involved in the Ada 1995 and 2005 revisions, and still works with the language today as both a designer and user.

In a new study that has potentially Orwellian implications, ABI Research projects that revenue for video surveillance software will quadruple over the next five years.

After warning on Tuesday that hackers were exploiting an unpatched bug in Adobe Systems' Flash Player software, Symantec has backtracked from this claim, saying the flaw is "very similar" to another vulnerability that was patched last month.

The Department of Defence has chimed in on the network security debate, stating organizations need to be more proactive if they expect to ward off attackers that readily exploit the high levels of trust usually reserved for employees and known systems.

A SQL injection attack that has affected at least a half-million Web sites has entered a "third wave" that's more resistant than previous versions to traditional security measures, according to IBM security researchers.

Even in a town where almost nothing is smaller than huge, the joint US$8 billion-plus CityCenter venture between MGM Mirage and Dubai World has to be considered grandiose.

Only 33 per cent of IT managers in Australia and New Zealand consider the convergence and sophistication of online threats to be the biggest threat to security systems according to research carried out for MessageLabs, by Galaxy.

The sales department's performance is measured on revenue, not on data protection. So it's no surprise that salespeople focus on closing deals, not security holes. As a result, they sometimes sacrifice security for convenience. They log onto Wi-Fi hot spots in airports to work on presentations despite the risk of being hacked. They carry reams of information, some of it propriety, on their smart phones. They transfer deal details on USB drives. Although companies have done much to address the challenges of this frequently mobile population, there's still more work to do.

IBM researchers are developing new attack prevention technology for the company's virtualization products.

One year ago, Microsoft was defending the quality of its products, battling with the world's largest security vendors over features in its next-generation platforms, and pitching the company's nascent promise as a provider of IT systems-defense tools at the annual RSA conference.