Weekly brief - August 17, 2009

Poor password management a rising problem

Viruses and worms get all the headlines, but poor password management is a worse problem, says a study by Channel Insider and CompTIA.

According to Larry Walsh. VARs and security service providers say they find more problems with password management than anti-virus applications when they do security assessments.

For more see Larry Walsh's blog...

IT products and services heading for regulation by 2015

Gartner has made the interesting prediction that it expects a range of IT products and services to be regulated by 2015, due to factors such as the growth and scale of criminal hacking networks, and the impact of social networks on personal privacy.

As a result, the IT research group has advised businesses to prepare now for the effect the regulation will have on their processes and procedures.

For more read V3's take on the analyst's view...

Google helped Twitter fend off DDOS attacks

As the dust finally starts to settle on the DDOS attacks on Twitter, it seems the popular microblogging site's IT staff called on help from their peers at Google.

As we now know, Twitter itself was not the target, but instead turned out to be collateral damage in an online attack against various social networking sites in an apparent attempt by pro-Russian hackers to silence a critic of Russia's war with Georgia.

For more read Wired's analysis of the situation...

Yahoo re-introduces concept of paid-for email

Yahoo is proposing a new `paid email' service as a method of countering the growing problem of spam.

The company is trialling a new service known as CentMail, allowing users to buy packs of 500 virtual stamps at a cost of $5, or one cent per stamp.

For more read Yahoo's announcement of the service....

Survey looks at healthcare security staff selection issues

Research from AlliedBarton has taken a look at the methodologies required for efficient selection of staff in the healthcare security industry.

The survey, which included in-depth interviews with senior level administrators at 22 organizations representing 190 acute care and specialty hospitals across the US, also underscored the importance of specialized training.

For read the company's free PDF report...

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