Editor's News

The British public's capability to spot and prevent cyber attacks is the next venture for the Cyber Security Challenge.   Working in partnership with GCHQ, a new virtual game will aim to find future cyber defence talent by protecting a threatened, fictional aerospace company "Ebell Technologies" against a hacktivist group.   Featuring fictional hacktivists Flag Day Associates, a group invented for the 2014/2015 competition and recurring throughout the year, “Assignment: Astute Explorer” will give members...

A proposed report requiring reporting of breaches and a standard of cyber defence has been pushed back by a month by the US Department of Defense.   According to Bloomberg, companies that do business with the Defense Department will face new rules requiring them to report computer breaches to the Pentagon and give the Government access to their networks to analyse the attacks. However a report that was to be released on the rules has...

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has announced his resignation from the board of directors.   Following his decision to resign as CEO in a tear-filled video, Steve Ballmer announced in an open letter to Microsoft that “Microsoft has been my life’s work” and he was proud of that and excited by what I see in front of the company and this leadership team.   He said: “There are challenges ahead but the opportunities are even...

              Deployment of honeypots in public cloud infrastructures around the world has shown that 40 per cent of attacks come from Russia, and 21 per cent of attacks on the US come from within the US itself.   The research of the by Alert Logic has observed the type and frequency of attacks, and found that attacks against the Asia pacific region most frequently originated in the USA (63...

Two-thirds of British businesses have been prompted to re-think their data protection strategy by 2014’s headlines.   According to a survey of 850 senior IT decision makers across Europe by Trend Micro, while 68 per cent are rethinking their data protection strategy, 24 per cent have not. Rik Ferguson, vice president security research at Trend Micro, said: “That businesses are being prompted by news coverage of big breaches suggests that the current penalties aren’t doing...

US hospital group Community Health Systems has said that it was the victim of a state-sponsored cyber attack and has seen 4.5 million patient records stolen.   Pointing the finger at China, Community Health Systems said that the hacking group known as "APT 18" were to blame, and may have links to the Chinese Government. In the attack, Social Security numbers and other personal data were taken, according to Reuters.   The personal data included...

Anthony J. Bettencourt has been named as the new President and CEO of Imperva.   With founder and current CEO Shlomo Kramer now serving at Chief Strategy Officer and continuing to serve as chairman of Imperva’s board of directors, Bettencourt was previously CEO of Coverity and serves on the boards of Proofpoint, Blinkx and Formation Data Systems.   Bettencourt said: “I am very pleased to be joining Imperva, and look forward to capitalising on the...

Following allegations that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was targeted by the NSA, new evidence has emerged which suggests that American politicians were recorded by German Intelligence.   According to CNN, Germany's intelligence service have intercepted phone calls made by the last two US secretaries of state – Hillary Clinton and current member John Kerry. German intelligence service BND apparently intercepted a phone call from Clinton "by chance" in 2012 while she was traveling on a...

Microsoft has pulled one of the patches it issued last week, saying MS14-045 can cause a “blue screen of death”.   In its update, Microsoft said that it is “investigating behaviour in which fonts do not render correctly” after any of the following updates are installed:   2982791 MS14-045: Description of the security update for kernel-mode drivers: August 12, 2014; 2970228 Update to support the new currency symbol for the Russian ruble in Windows; 2975719 August 2014 update...

American retailer Supervalu has said it has no evidence of any misuse of customer data, as it said it was investigating a potential data breach.   According to Reuters, Supervalu CEO Sam Duncan said in a statement: “I regret any inconvenience that this may cause our customers, but want to assure them that it is safe to shop in our stores.”   It suspected that the intrusion may have resulted in the theft of account...