Stories about: NSA

US government initiatives aimed at fostering the sharing of security intelligence throughout the federal space are helping to establish the community atmosphere and best practices necessary to help those agencies -- and private enterprises -- improve their network and applications defenses, a National Security Agency leader told attendees of the Black Hat conference on Wednesday.

We all face it - the daily barrage of spam, now infested with zero-day malware attacks, not to mention the risks of malicious insiders, infected laptops coming and going behind our deep packet-inspecting firewalls and intrusion-prevention systems. Some even have to worry about how to prove steps of due care and due diligence towards a growing roster of regulatory compliance pressures.

The U.S. agency best known for eavesdropping on telephone calls had a hand in the development of Microsoft's Vista operating system, Microsoft confirmed Tuesday.

Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, told the BBC that the surveillance involved in foiling the plot to blow up trans-Atlantic planes had been "unprecedented".

Online scams that lure online banking and e-commerce customers to phony Web sites and trick them into giving up sensitive account information have been a mainstay of online criminals for years. However, the increase in so-called spear-phishing attacks is new, as is the increasing sophistication of the software they use to penetrate enterprise networks.

As American angst over their government's massive domestic spying program soars, the Victorian Privacy Commissioner has warned responsible handling of personal information will increasingly require deft application of the "best custodian principle".

Eugene Spafford, one of the leading experts on information security, is director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security at Purdue University. Network World Senior Editor Carolyn Duffy Marsan recently sat down with Spafford at his office to talk about the latest security threats and what network executives can do to mitigate them.

Some 12 online credit card fraud networks are in operation today with active traders on some Web sites numbering between 7000 and 9000, according to a US Secret Service agent going by the name of Jake Jacobsen.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to turn the clicks and clacks of typing on a computer keyboard into a startlingly accurate transcript of what exactly is being typed.

The US Defense Information Systems Agency is aggressively enhancing its current end-to-end information transport system to support the Pentagon's controversial dreams of establishing its own Internet - a $US200 billion Global Information Grid.

Security certifications like CISSP are all the rage, but just how useful are they to CSOs looking to fill critical security positions?