Stories about: INS

Microsoft's Malware Protection Center has picked up on some positive news that comes at a time when online threats are apparently increasing without limit. According to the MMPC's blog, there have been two VX (Virus writing and sharing) groups to have shut down in a very short period of time, seemingly without any external pressure. According to the post, there is really only one active group remaining, something which would have seemed far fetched not even a decade ago.

A recent study of Web browser installations showed that far too few are up to date with the latest security patches. And browsers aren't alone; as my dear old mum can attest, it can be hard to keep up with OS and application patches when all you want to do is use your computer for work. It should come as no surprise that many PCs are vulnerable to security exploits that could otherwise be prevented.

China's financial markets have paralleled the rapid growth and development of the country and for a time were regarded as something of a 'Wild West' environment, where the risks were significant but the rewards were immense. Rapid growth in cities like Shanghai and the handover of Hong Kong and Macau have provided ample opportunities for investment and the development of a form of capitalist communism has created an environment where the potential rewards seemed to justify the risk.

For those of us who make our living behind a keyboard in IT, it's hard to imagine a more time-tested vulnerability than the end-user. Armed with network access, these IT viruses wreak havoc nearly everywhere you look -- havoc borne of tech idiocy.

Two years ago, GreenBorder, one of the early "sandbox" browsers, received mighty applause from Wall Street Journal tech guru Walt Mossberg. The sandbox browser -- basically, a browser running in a virtual container -- promised to keep nasty code from spilling into a computer's operating system and wreaking havoc.

Security issues often seem to smolder more than burn, but these six are certainly capable of lighting a fire under IT professionals at a moment's notice. Handle with care.

To use an Internet-connected computer is to be insecure and place your privacy in danger. Spyware, viruses, Trojans and assorted malware are everywhere on the Net, trying to hop onto your PC and cause damage. Snoopers want to get at your personal information for nefarious purposes, such as identity theft.

Microsoft SQL server hasn't had a public vulnerability announcement since 2004. The SQL Slammer worm struck in 2005, but the hole the worm exploited had been patched six months before. The holes that MS-Blaster and Code Red worm attacked had been patched, too. But back just a few years ago, no one really cared about patching really. We just didn't patch.

The total number of viruses will reach one million by year's end, according to security experts.

A recent string of high-profile ActiveX vulnerabilities caused the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) to advise users to disable the ubiquitous Microsoft browser plug-in technology altogether. The vectors for these recent exploits include a third-party image uploading tool used on both the Facebook and MySpace social networking sites, and flaws found in Yahoo's Music Jukebox, Real Networks' RealPlayer, and Apple's QuickTime.

Federated identity has long been a goal of many IT organizations. One look at the promise of federation, and it is easy to see why. After all, empowering one organization to serve as an identity provider for another frees IT from having to manage the identities of partnering organizations' employees and customers, thereby facilitating the pursuit of competitive-advantage projects. In this era of increasing enterprise decentralization, thanks in large part to the Web, establishing a federated identity framework is fast proving as essential as it is hard to pull off.