Stories by: Dan Verton

In what it called an "Information Age undercover investigation," the U.S. Secret Service Thursday announced that it has arrested 28 people from eight U.S. states and six countries allegedly involved in a global organized cybercrime ring.

Chief security officers used to be able to get the funding they wanted for critical IT security projects by using newspaper clippings detailing security failures that cost other companies millions of dollars.

The W32.Blaster worm may have contributed to the cascading effect of the Aug. 14 blackout, government and industry experts revealed this week. On the day of the blackout, Blaster degraded the performance of several communications lines linking key data centers used by utility companies to manage the power grid, the sources confirmed.

Microsoft is working with the US government in studying one of the most pressing challenges in federal information security, one that is critically important to future homeland security and information-sharing efforts: multilevel security workstations.

An antiquated IT infrastructure and cultural turf battles among the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and various intelligence agencies resulted in a lack of information sharing and analysis that contributed to the national security community's failure to head off the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to the results of a congressional investigation.

The US Department of Homeland Security this week offered the first public details of a proposed border-control system that will use biometric technology to authenticate the identities of visitors and immigrants entering the US.

Most corporate security officers share a common strategic role. But operationally, the duties of those filling such positions — whether the title is chief security officer (CSO), chief information security officer (CISO) or something else — are as diverse as the IT industry itself.

After officially retiring from public service Thursday, Howard Schmidt, the former chairman-elect of the now defunct President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, announced that he will be heading back west to a new job as the vice president of security for online auction site eBay Inc.

A host of new products promising to secure wireless networks and Web services deployments will be on prominent display in Las Vegas this week as the NetWorld+Interop 2003 (N+I) show kicks off.

The changing of the cybersecurity guard at the US Department of Homeland Security, coupled with complacency on the part of some corporate executives, has put a higher premium on information-sharing and cooperation between the private sector and the government.

Military officials and experts are characterising Operation Iraqi Freedom as the most IT-intensive military campaign in history.