Stories by: Ellen Messmer

McAfee this week announced a change in how it delivers malware-signature software updates that it says should result in much speedier fixes.

Do cybergangs work on evil "product upgrades" to improve their crimeware and attack methods?

Proctor & Gamble, the global manufacturer of household products, Friday said it has selected IBM ISS to provide managed security services.

Companies that handle credit cards can expect to see revised security rules released in early October, according to the group responsible for maintaining the Payment Card Industry security standard for storage and processing of credit and debit cards.

Carnegie-Mellon University Monday announced it's making available a free add-on to Mozilla Firefox 3.0 that's intended to boost browser security.

Will infrastructure virtualization sweep away existing switching structures while failing to grant benefits of performance, cost or improved security? Some say yes.

Symantec is acquiring nSuite Technologies for an undisclosed price to build out its portfolio of virtualization security and management technologies.

With McAfee buying data-loss-prevention vendor Reconnex for US$46 million in cash, the question now is how will McAfee move forward in the future to bring the Reconnex product suite into its portfolio, especially with the overlap in DLP products between the two?

The Jericho Forum, a group created in 2004 by IT security managers convinced that firewalls and other perimeter gateways had become a hindrance to e-commerce, made quite a splash with its rallying cry of "de-perimeterization."

The Black Hat conference and its post-event, DefCon, promise to be a security funhouse in the coming week, as experts in Las Vegas seek to shock and amaze by poking holes in today's network technologies. The Web, wireless LANs, routers and desktop software may all look different reflected in the Black Hat/DefCon hall of mirrors, where security vendors will be revealing their hacker sides.

IBM and Websense are separately issuing their semiannual security trend reports this week, and the picture isn't pretty for Web sites, open source software and social networking programs.