SecurityWeek

A former Bank of America (BOA) computer programmer was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison, after he installed malware on Bank of America ATMs that allowed him to suck out large amounts of cash from the machines. He pleaded guilty on April 13, 2011 and was sentenced this week.

In Boston, an employee of an MBTA subcontractor has been arrested in connection with an alleged scheme to produce millions of dollars’ worth of fake MBTA monthly passes and sell them directly to riders.Andres Townes, age 27, of Revere, MA, was arrested and charged with Larceny over $250 and Conspiracy to Commit Larceny over $250.

Security standards exist because someone recognized a need. HIPAA, for example, was created to protect sensitive healthcare data. All information security regulations were created for a reason. Healthcare organizations are required to comply with HIPAA and HITECH. HIPAA and HITECH define a standard that should be placed on certain healthcare data. While they might give us a sense of security, do HIPAA and HITECH really make us more secure?

NetIQ Corporation, a business unit of The Attachmate Group, this week announced it will take over the complete portfolio of identity and security solutions from sister company Novell. (Both are units of Attachmate) In addition, certain Novell data center solutions will be added to the NetIQ business unit solution portfolio.Novell product lines now operating under the Houston, Texas based NetIQ business unit include:

A joint study released this week by ThreatMetrix and the Ponemon Institute, looks at the increase in mobile commerce activity, and how this trend plays a role in the prominence of fraudulent mobile transactions. The study examined how comfortable consumers are with sharing their mobile location with a company. More than half of respondents said they would be willing to share this information if it meant protecting against online fraud.

In early May, the Michaels art supply chain reported that 90 PIN pads within some of its 995 stores nationwide had been compromised, with victims reporting fraudulent withdrawals of up to $500 made from ATMs on the West Coast against their credit and debit card accounts. While 90 units represents less than 1 percent of the total, Michaels took the extraordinary precaution of removing the approximately 7,200 comparable PIN pads from all its US stores. The company was also monitoring...

Symantec today announced it would acquire privately-held Clearwell Systems, a provider of eDiscovery, archiving and backup solutions for $390 Million in cash.

  Mac OS Might not be as Attractive to Attackers as you Might Think.

What’s old is new again

Red Hat today announced the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1, the first update to the platform since the delivery of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 in November 2010. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1, Red Hat continues to set the standard in flexibility, performance and quality that customers around the world rely on for their open source enterprise environments, spanning physical, virtual and cloud deployments.

Microsoft has released a new version of its Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET).

According to recent survey findings coming from CyberSource, a Visa company, airlines lost an estimated $1.4 billion due to online payment fraud in 2010. But with so many security checks that come along with air travel, how is this possible? A typical fraud scenario in the airline industry plays out like this:

In February 2011, the clock finally ran out on IPv4, the trusty Internet Protocol that has been used to connect networked computers for the last 30 years. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which manages the master pool of IP addresses, assigned its last five blocks of IPv4 space to the world's five Regional Internet Registries.

BeyondTrust today announced the acquisition of Lumigent Technologies, a Massachusetts-based provider of database security and activity monitoring solutions.As a result of the acquisition, BeyondTrust today announced PowerBroker Database, a solution that provides IT security departments with the ability to closely monitor database activity of privileged users, assess system configurations, and capture, alert, and report on changes to critical system configuration and business data.

Threats to our networks are faster, smarter, more prevalent, more targeted, and more elusive than ever before. At the same time, the number and types of operating systems, applications and services running on the network continue to grow. Gaining visibility into different user types – remote, mobile, third-parties, and by job function – and accommodating their unique requirements adds even greater complexity when it comes to protecting our IT infrastructure.