Security: Interviews

What is the mid-market looking for in terms of security?

The Convention on Cybercrime is the work of the Council of Europe and is aimed at facilitating international cooperation in the investigation and prosecution of computer crimes. Since the Convention came into being in 2001, the COE has been working to address the growing international concern over the threats posed by hacking and other computer-related crimes.

Symantec chairman and CEO John Thompson last week delivered a keynote speech to thousands of security professionals at the RSA Conference 2008 in the US. Ellen Messmer caught up with Thompson at the RSA event, where he expanded on a range of topics including vendor alliances, Symantec's competition and the importance of data-loss prevention technology.

Ever more computers are carrying ever more confidential data -- trade secrets, personal information of clients and constituents, and national security information. Encrypted hard disks requiring hardware keys or passwords are supposedly the way to keep that information safe.

It's the front lines in the online fraud war: eBay and its PayPal subsidiary are the most-spoofed brands by fraudsters engineering phishing scams, according to research firm Gartner.

Art Coviello, President of RSA and Executive Vice President of EMC Corporation, talks to Computerworld's Siobhan Chapman about enterprise threats, IT security spend and the rising threat posed by social networks.

If Samy Kamkar plays his cards right, he may be allowed to visit MySpace again in just a few months. For the time being, however, he's not even allowed to touch a computer, following a January 2007 guilty plea for creating what many consider to be the first Web 2.0 worm: the Samy worm.

The numbers are downright frightening: One in five U.S. teenagers who regularly log onto the Internet say they have received unwanted sexual solicitations via the Web, according to the U.S. Crimes Against Children Research Center. And, the center says, 25 percent of children have been exposed to pornographic material online.

Responsible for steering the course of EMC's security franchise, Art Coviello, executive vice president of EMC's RSA Security division, says the unit will eventually contribute US$2 billion to EMC's annual revenue. In a recent interview with Computerworld, Coviello talked about a balance between storage and security needs, why administrators focused only on "dumb storage" are a dying breed and why selling risk needs no justification.

At Computerworld's Storage Networking World conference in the US, Frank Abagnale gave a keynote presentation on his life as an imposter and fraudster, a story that was told in the book and subsequent Steven Spielberg movie, Catch Me If You Can. Prior to his presentation, Abagnale spoke with Computerworld about ethics, computer crime and security risks faced by IT professionals.

What do you get when a bunch of former IBM and Cisco security specialists get together? Sydney-based security services outfit, earthwave. The company was founded seven years ago by managing director, Carlo Minassian, who has also worked for IBM. He recently spoke with ARN about how the company survived its first three tumultuous years and what it had in store for the next 12 months. Minassian also discussed how earthwave fits into the security landscape and how the industry has evolved in recent years.