online security

The survey of 583 US companies conducted by Ponemon Research and commissioned by Juniper Networks 90% of the polled said their companies suffered data breach as a result of hacking at least once during the past 12 months.

The survey shows that about 60% suffered two or more breaches over the past year with over 50% reporting they had little confidence of being able to stave off further attacks over the next 12 months.

"We expected a majority to say they had experienced a breach," said Johnnie Konstantas, director of product marketing at Juniper.

According to Symantec Corp report users’ personal information at Facebook may have been accidentally leaked to third parties, in particular advertisers, over the past few years.

The security firm wrote in a blog post that third-parties would have had access to personal information such as profiles, photographs and chat, and could have had the ability to post messages.

"We estimate that as of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage," the blog post said.

Fifth Third Processing Solutions, a provider of full-service payment solutions, launched new security solution to protect merchants against data breach. The company announced support for Hypercom Corporation's payment software with Voltage Security's point-to-point data encryption.

The combined security solutions help retailers and restaurants reduce the risk of data breaches by encrypting card data in the terminal and rendering it unusable until it is received and processed by Fifth Third Processing Solutions.

Users of Google services will now be better protected with the newly launched 2-step verification system.

The 2-step verification includes your password and code you get via your phone.

Google explained in its post on the official blog: “Take your time to carefully set up 2-step verification—we expect it may take up to 15 minutes to enroll. A user-friendly set-up wizard will guide you through the process, including setting up a backup phone and creating backup codes in case you lose access to your primary phone.”

The Merchant Risk Council (MRC), a merchant-led trade association announced today the finalists for the 2011 MRC Emerging Technology Awards (METAwards) that recognize the most innovative payment, fraud and security tools in electronic commerce – as judged by a diverse panel of online and multi-channel merchants.

Facebook tries another out of its mad experiments about security. Now instead of typical Captcha that help indentify that a user who is logging in is not a bot Facebook asks its members to identify their friends based on their profile pictures.

Facebook activates this so-called “social authentication” when it suspects malicious activity such as logging from different parts of the world in a period of a couple hours. During this authentication process a user will have to identify a few friends through multiple-choice questions to access your account.

Microsoft has issued the final version of its free security solution after a five-month beta testing program. The new version features updated heuristic engine as well as the addition of network intrusion detection technology.

Besides, the slightly redesigned dashboard allows users to manage Microsoft's firewall from inside MSE. MSE 2.0 also features tighter integration with Internet Explorer as a mechanism for protecting against web-based threats.

IID (Internet Identity), a provider of technology and services that help organizations secure Internet presence, announced in its “Q3 State of DNS Report” that it has identified major online security holes for U.S. government organizations. The report states that major part of Federal agency run .gov domains are not signing their DNS (Domain Name System) with DNSSEC (Domain Name Security Extensions) despite a December 2009 Federal deadline for adoption. DNSSEC is designed to ensure DNS entries

ProPay, a provider of End-to-End Payment Security, credit card processing, electronic payment services, and tokenization, announced that it plans to host the first in a series of Payment Card Security seminars designed to provide real world guidance around protecting data while achieving compliance in a more cost effective and efficient manner. The first session will be held in Dallas, Texas, on October 20, 2010.

According to a report by the Internet security firm AVG 7 of the 10 safest countries in which to use the Internet are in Africa, with Sierra Leone rated the safest. Researchers of the security vendor made up a list of virus and malware attacks by country picked up by AVG security software, with data from more than 127 million computers in 144 countries to determine incidence rates of such attacks. Average incident rate for Sierra Leone was one attack for every 692 Web surfers.

Sierra Leone was followed by Niger with one in every 442 surfers likely to be attacked while online.

China is implementing its regulation that has existed for a time remaining silent and unapplied. The regulation instructs that core security products used by government and infrastructure companies such as banks and transportation must be provided by Chinese companies.

Mike Vergara, director of consumer protections for PayPal, wrote in a company blog that the online payments leader is cooperating with the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) and a group of private companies, nonprofits and government agencies to educate people about the importance of online security, and how a single person’s actions can affect millions.

A new research by BitDefender confirmed that there is sense in having different user names and passwords to protect identities and information not meant to be public. The company revealed that many people today use the same user name and password in logging into several secure websites. The experiment also revealed that some 250,000 e-mail addresses, user names and passwords were found in social and open networks, including blogs, collaboration platforms, torrents, and other channels.

eNom, Inc., the world’s largest ICANN accredited domain name wholesale registrar and the largest reseller of VeriSign SSL Certificates has announced the launch of the VeriSign Trust Seal to its expansive security product offering catalog. 

McAfee, Inc. has announced the launch of its McAfee(R) Identity Protection, one of the most comprehensive and easy to use identity protection services on the market which was co-developed with Experian's ProtectMyID.com(TM). According to McAfee the product features proactive identity surveillance which keeps consumers' identities safe by providing multiple layers of protection, including monitoring the major credit reporting agencies and public records as well as Internet scanning for indicators of identity theft. 

McAfee Identity Protection key benefits: