SecurityWeek

San Francisco -- RSA Conference 2015 -- Examine the Ponemon Institute's '2014 Cost of Data Breach Study' and it becomes clear there is a vast difference in the costs of dealing with a data breach in different parts of the world.

Attackers are expanding their tactics, users are unknowingly aiding attacks, and breaches are now the new normal. Remaining undetected for longer periods of time, attacks are more difficult to stop. During that time, sensitive customer information and intellectual property is compromised, putting a company’s reputation, resources, and value at risk. How quickly defenders can detect and respond to a breach can mean the difference between a nuisance and a nightmare.

Researchers at Zscaler have conducted an analysis of some of the most prevalent IRC-based botnets and determined that these types of threats remain effective as the features incorporated into them continue to improve.IRC botnets rely on IRC servers for command and control (C&C) communications. Their operators control malware-infected machines through IRC channels.

North American organizations are well aware of the threat posed by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and over half of them are investing more in protection compared to last year, according to a report published this week by real-time information services and analytics provider Neustar.

German business software company SAP has patched a vulnerability in SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) that allows an unauthorized user to access the database server.

Malicious actors are attempting to hijack online shops by exploiting a recently disclosed critical vulnerability in Magento, the popular e-commerce platform owned by eBay.

Russian hackers were able to access an unclassified Pentagon computer network earlier this year, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said Thursday. "We quickly identified the compromise and had a team of incident responders hunting down the intruders within 24 hours," Carter said during a speech on technology and cybersecurity at Stanford University in California.

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will head to Silicon Valley on Thursday in a bid to recruit tech gurus for the Pentagon, even if just on a part-time basis. After giving a speech at Stanford University, Carter will meet with Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and then with employees of the social network giant who used to work for the military.

Intel Security announced this week at the RSA Conference in San Francisco enhancements to several of its enterprise offerings.The improvements made to the company’s solutions are designed to provide customers stronger controls, greater visibility, and new integrations, Intel Security said.

Research presented on Wednesday by automated breach defense solutions provider Damballa at the RSA Conference in San Francisco shows that mobile malware infection rates in the United States are low.

RSA announced this week the launch of a new family of smart identity solutions designed to help businesses address the challenges resulted from the increase of users, devices, and data.

RSA Conference 2015 -- "The DevOps train is coming, and security can choose to get on board or not, but DevOps isn't going away."

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill aimed at improving the sharing of information about cybersecurity threats between the government and the private sector. The measure, passed on a 307-116 vote, would give President Barack Obama's administration most of what it sought, but the bill has raised objections from civil liberties activists.

Researchers have identified a vulnerability in wpa_supplicant, the popular Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) supplicant for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, Windows, and various other operating systems.

Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it’s extending its bug bounty program to include Project Spartan, the codename used for the new web browser included in Windows 10 Technical Preview, and the Azure cloud platform.

Last week, Amazon announced a new AWS service called Amazon Machine Learning, designed to “make it easy for developers of all skill levels to use machine learning (ML) technology.” The service is based on the same ML technology Amazon uses to anticipate efficiencies in supply chain management or detect fraudulent transactions, and is a counter-punch to the Microsoft Azure Machine Learning service announced last February.

RSA Conference 2015 -- As the crowds descended on the RSA Conference in San Francisco at the start of the week, Raytheon and Websense announced a deal they hope will disrupt the industry.

IBM announced on Tuesday the launch of two new cloud-based threat analytics services designed to help companies prioritize security events and simplify log management.Powered by IBM’s QRadar technology, the new services are available through a SaaS model and they can be acquired along with other Security Managed Services from IBM.

ThreatStream, a security startup that recently raised $22 million, unveiled on Tuesday at the RSA Conference a new Apple Watch application that allows users of the company’s flagship ThreatStream OPTIC platform to easily manage threat intelligence regardless of their location.

CipherCloud announced on Tuesday at the RSA Conference in San Francisco the availability of Cloud Discovery Enterprise Edition, a solution designed to help organizations discover shadow applications throughout their corporate ecosystem.