Reactions positive on federal cybersecurity chief, but privacy a concern
Positive reactions from the security industry are coming in response to President Obama’s decision to set up a high-level cybersecurity coordinator within the federal government.
Obama said the coordinator — pointedly not named czar, which sounds dictatorial — would lead an effort to beef up both defensive and offensive cybersecurity capabilities. The coordinator would not take over the cybersecurity role, but rather facilitate different parts of the government, such as the FBI or the National Security… Continue Reading
Symantec snaps up Mi5 to grow its small business protections
Symantec announced that it has bought web security firm Mi5 Networks to expand its portfolio of security software tailored to small businesses. With the Sunnyvale, Calif. company’s technology, the corporation plans to strengthen its abilities to analyze all of the web traffic entering and exiting business web sites. No further details were disclosed about the all-cash deal.
In addition to the acquisition, Symantec also announced it will be rolling out a new suite of security software… Continue Reading
DEMO: Symantec launches Project Guru for family tech support
Everyone seems to have a “go to” geek among their extended family or group of friends — someone who handles all their tech problems for them. But that go-to geek doesn’t necessarily live close enough to drop in whenever there’s a problem. Symantec’s new “Project Guru” service, which it’s announcing today, gives those geeks a way to provide tech support to friends and family members remotely.
This project — Symantec’s third presentation at the DEMO show… Continue Reading
Will Symantec’s CEO repeat his success with our economy?
Symantec chief executive John Thompson is widely reported to be President Barack Obama’s top choice for Secretary of Commerce, the only remaining spot on Obama’s cabinet. Thompson seems like a solid choice, and not just because he was an early and vocal Obama supporter — during his 10-year tenure, Thompson is credited with growing Symantec from a small company to one of the leaders in Internet security (it makes the popular Norton suite of security… Continue Reading
Roundup: RPX takes on patent trolls, Facebook revamping Marketplace, and more
Here’s the latest action:
RPX Corp takes on patent trolls — The company is buying patents to keep them from so-called “troll” companies that use patents for lawsuits or to collect licensing payments. Companies that pay a fixed yearly fee to RPX get licenses it holds; RPX pledges never to assert the patents. IBM and Cisco are already partners.
Is Microsoft Live Search getting a new name? — Maybe it will be changed to Kumo, Japanese for “cloud” or… Continue Reading
Black Hat: Typosquatting the presidential election web sites
Bad hackers haven’t caused much damage this year during the online-heavy presidential campaign. But the potential is there. Consider “typosquatting.”
There are about 160 different ways to type in the wrong web site for www.barackobama.com. Oliver Friedrichs, former director of research at Symantec, knows this because he did a study of the sites that typo squat, or exploit users’ misspellings of web site names to siphon off traffic from the official candidate’s web site for a… Continue Reading
Roundup: A longtime Yahoo employee leaves, speculation that Loopt beat out Whrrl for WWDC keynote position and more
Here’s the latest action:
Another long time Yahoo employee departs — Jeremy Zawodny, a programmer who had been with the company since 1999, is moving on to a unnamed smaller company. Zawodny helped launch the Yahoo Developer Network and worked on several internal projects for the company. In his blog post on the topic, Zawodny points out that his departure is completely unrelated to the failed Microsoft takeover and now the Carl Icahn takeover bid. He follows… Continue Reading
Vontu’s $350M win shows how patience, focus pays off
If you’re an entrepreneur, you may want to avoid the Web 2.0 area, which is littered now with unpromising me-too ideas. You may want to consider something less sexy — data security, for example.
Vontu, a six-year-old Silicon Valley (Cupertino, Calif.) company which makes software to avoid data loss, said it has been acquired by Symantec, the maker of Norton security software, for a cool $350 million. That’s ten times the amount invested in Vontu by… Continue Reading