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Want your privacy back? Try disappearing
September 2, 2010 | Comment on this post
Danger and money. Those are the two reasons people choose to disappear, says professional skip-tracer Frank M. Ahearn. Think witness protection program. Or faking your death as part of a life insurance scam.
Ahearn helps find people for a living. He says he helps them vanish, too. He says he helped identify Monica Lewinsky as the intern dallying with President Bill Clinton. And he says he helped locate — and hide …more
Shifting dynamics trigger Intel’s McAfee acquistion; is Symantec next?
August 20, 2010 | 1 Comment
The 60% share-price premium McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt got Intel to pay to acquire McAfee doubled the share-price premium DeWalt garnered the last time he flipped a mid-sized tech company to a giant corporation.
In 2003, DeWalt, then CEO of Documentum, sold the content management firm to EMC, for $1.9 billion, at a share price that translated into a 29% premium, says Daniel Ives, tech industry analyst at …more
Try these new software tools to boost your protection
August 18, 2010 | 1 Comment
Roaming the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas last month, LastWatchdog ran across several powerful new tools recently and/or soon to be made available to consumers to help them better protect themselves online. This is another small step forward. Here is my report published today in 1.8 million copies of USA TODAY circulating in newsstands, newsracks and hotel rooms across the land.
By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY, 18 …more
A call for de-escalating cyber espionage
August 17, 2010 | Comment on this post
Earlier this month, Sophos published its mid-year 2010 Security Threat Report, revealing some alarming attitudes in support of escalating cyber espionage. In this LastWatchdog guest post, Chet Wisniewski, Sophos senior security advisor, expresses his concerns about such attitudes.
By Chester Wisniewski
In the first half of 2010 two notable incidents raised awareness of cyber-war and …more
Why the challenges to stopping cybercrime remain daunting
August 16, 2010 | Comment on this post
It was encouraging to see many new security solutions and hear about new public-private partnerships, such as the drive to implement DNSSEC, at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas last month. In this LastWatchdog guest post, Tom Kellermann, Vice President of Security Awareness at Core Security, makes the case that the bad guys, however, remain far ahead.
How DNS, the backbone of the Internet, is being shored up
August 13, 2010 | Comment on this post
Two recent developments having to do with Domain Name System, or DNS, should help substantively shore up cybersecurity over the long haul.
VeriSign this week launched a new managed DNS service aimed at helping companies and organizations — especially small- and medium-sized firms — run more smoothly and better defend against denial of service attacks.
That follows the big announcement late last month at the Black Hat cybersecurity …more
Google, Verizon clash with the FCC over reshaping the Internet
August 10, 2010 | Comment on this post
Now begins the protracted chess match, pitting Google and the telecom industry against the Federal Communications Commission.
At stake: say so over whether there will be one tier, or multiple tiers, of Internet service for PCs and mobile devices moving forward.
That’s the upshot of Google and Verizon teaming up this week to suggest a new framework of federal laws governing “net neutrality,” the notion that all Web sites …more
Google-Verizon call for Congressional ban on Net Neutrality for mobile devices
August 10, 2010 | Comment on this post
CEO Eric Schmidt
Google on Monday reversed its long-held support of Net Neutrality — the notion that all Web sites should be equally available to all persons — and joined forces with Verizon calling for new federal laws that would reshape the Internet. Howls of protest instantly erupted from consumer advocacy groups.
MoveOn.Org Civic Action, Credo Action, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, ColorofChange.org and Free Press …more