SecurityWeek

OTTAWA - Canada "has been slow" to set up firewalls to protect against cyber threats to critical infrastructure, leaving the nation vulnerable to crippling attacks, the auditor general warned Tuesday. In a report, Auditor General Michael Ferguson said the government has made only "limited progress" over the past decade to safeguard electrical grids, telecommunications infrastructure, banking systems, manufacturing and transportation, as well as its own computers.

BRUSSELS - The European Commission outlined measures Tuesday to tighten controls on online gambling, a fast-growing, multi-billion-euro industry, to combat fraud, money laundering and rigging of sport fixtures. "Consumers, but more broadly all citizens, must be adequately protected," European internal markets commissioner Michel Barnier said.

Adobe has released security updates addressing critical vulnerabilities in Adobe Shockwave Player as part of its regularly scheduled update.

Return Path, provider of email intelligence information and solutions, today launched two anti-phishing solutions that it says will arm brand marketers and IT security professionals with tools to protect their brands through visibility into known, unknown and potentially harmful, fraudulent email traffic.

The Federal Trade Commission has published a staff report containing guidelines and recommendations for companies that use facial recognition technologies. The compilation of best practices is aimed at protecting consumers when such technologies are deployed for purposes such as marketing.

According to its security roundup for Q3 2012, Trend Micro says that the number of high-risk and overall dangerous applications targeting the Android platform is more than five times the size it was last quarter.

Digital Guardian 6.1 Includes Advanced Malware Prevention, Detection and Containment, Extends Coverage to Windows 8 and iOS Verdasys, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based information security solutions provider, this week released Digital Guardian 6.1, a new solution touted by the company as the beginning of the DLP 3.0 era.

CloudLock, a provider of cloud data security solutions, today launched “CloudLock Apps Firewall”, a solution that the company says helps enterprises discover, classify and enable trusted third party mobile and web applications that require access to users’ Google Apps accounts and data.

TAIPEI - Taiwan legislators on Monday demanded a thorough evaluation of sensitive sectors in which China has invested or are open to Chinese investment. The move comes as Taiwan lifts restrictions on investments by China as the two former enemies forge closer economic ties. Parliament's defense committee passed a resolution from the ruling Kuomintang party calling on security authorities to follow similar moves in the United States and Britain.

Report Shows Notable Increase in Cross-Site Attacks In Q3 2012FireHost, a Dallas, Texas-based secure cloud hosting company, today revealed the findings of its latest web application attack report for the third quarter of 2012.

In part one of the Virtualized Data Center Security series, I wrote about how important it is to ensure security solutions are integrated with orchestration systems so that security does not slow down the dynamic nature of virtualization and cloud environments.

Defense contractor Raytheon said Monday that it has acquired Teligy, Inc., a technology firm that develops custom software at the system level, including device drivers, firmware, embedded applications, protocol stacks, board support packages, and custom interfaces.

Researchers from two universities in Germany have published a paper on the state of SSL within several Android applications, and the findings were far from positive. According to their research, many of the tested applications failed to properly implement SSL, leaving millions of users – based on installation figures – exposed to basic Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attacks.

On Friday, Microsoft announced that it has reached a settlement with Andrey N. Sabelnikov, a Russian software programmer, after naming him in the lawsuit surrounding the takedown of the Kelihos botnet. Friday’s announcement marked the close of the Kelihos case, which was initiated earlier this year, after last September’s takedown actions against the botnet itself.

BEIJING - US security fears over two China telecom firms have spotlighted Western suspicions Chinese companies are state-influenced, a culture clash analysts say could loom larger as the country's businesses look overseas.