Ellen Messmer

Senior Editor

 

emessmer@nww.com (941) 792-1061

Network World 9303 Ninth Ave. NW Bradenton, FL 34209

Recent articles by Messmer

Symantec takes cybercrime snapshot with 'Underground Economy' report
11/24/08
The criminal market online for buying and selling stolen credit cards, pirated software and information about financial accounts is thriving, according to a Symantec report published Monday.

Cybersecurity is focus of new University of Texas start-up incubator
11/18/08
The University of Texas at San Antonio Tuesday announced a technology incubator aimed at fostering IT security-based start-ups within the state.

John Thompson retiring as Symantec CEO
11/18/08
John Thompson to retire as Symantec CEO, Enrique Salem named as president and CEO

PCI council sharpens oversight of security auditors
11/17/08
The PCI Security Standards Council introduces plan to sharpen oversight of qualified security assessors and approved scanning vendors.

10 IT security companies to watch
11/17/08
10 IT security companies worth watching, including those focusing on video surveillance, data leakage and application whitelisting.

NetWitness to offer network-traffic analyzer as freeware
11/17/08
NetWitness Corp. Monday said it's offering its network-traffic analysis tool under a freeware license to end users.

Cisco fights to keep No. 1 spot in network security
11/17/08
Cisco, dominant in the network-security market, faces questions about how well its security products work, especially as modules in Cisco switches and routers.

Marshal, 8e6 Technologies merge to form Marshal8e6
11/12/08
Internet security vendors Marshal and 8e6 Technologies have announced a merger to form a new company, Marshal8e6.

University of Florida discloses patient-record data breach
11/12/08
The University of Florida today disclosed that an attacker gained access to a server in its College of Dentistry where records and other personal information of 330,000 current or former dental patients were stored.

Antimalware group sets product testing guidelines
11/11/08
The Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization yesterday announced its members, which include more than 15 security firms specializing in combating malicious code, have adopted test principles and best practices they hope will eventually help unify the industry in the sphere of malware-code testing and reporting.

Distributed DoS attacks surging in scale, ISPs report
11/11/08
Massive distributed denial-of-service attacks against Internet service providers and their customers doubled in intensity over the past year, according to a security survey of 66 global ISPs.

Myth or truism? Security experts judge conventional wisdom
11/10/08
They are etched into the conventional wisdom of IT security, but are these 12 articles of faith (to some) actually wise, or are they essentially myths? We've assembled a panel of experts to offer their judgments.

Express Scripts discloses extortion threat, possible data breach
11/10/08
Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefits management company based in St. Louis, Mo., late last week disclosed it received an extortion threat in October pertaining to patient records that it holds.

Adobe expected to disclose new Reader flaw
11/04/08
Adobe is expected to disclose a security vulnerability in an older version of its Reader document viewing software that would allow an attacker to compromise a machine via the malicious use of a PDF.

IBM 'security on a stick' protects online bank customers
10/29/08
IBM's research division in Switzerland is working on a device that IBM scientists call "security on a stick" - a small USB device that plugs into any computer to establish a secure channel to a bank's online transaction server.

Crypto hash algorithm competition set to begin
10/29/08
Security experts vying to have their technology selected as the next cryptographic-hash algorithm standard for the U.S. government need to submit their entries this week. Then they will have a long wait ahead: The new Secure Hash Algorithm standard isn't expected to be chosen until 2012.

IT security spending not darkened by economic gloom
10/28/08
The economic downturn is expected to puncture IT spending but not security, according to some analysts and end users.

Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube gain traction at work
10/27/08
Social-networking sites Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and YouTube are widely used in business today, according to a survey carried out by market research firm NewDiligence and commissioned by FaceTime Communications

P2P legislation forcing university IT to get tough on piracy
10/23/08
A new law aimed at stopping illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing of digital entertainment content, such as music and videos, requires the nation's colleges and universities to educate students that P2P piracy is illegal and strongly encourages the use of technology to monitor and block illegal P2P.

How to exploit a down economy to get special security needs satisfied
10/16/08
When there's not quite the right fit in network security gear to meet your needs and goals, you might wind up settling for some distant second choice, if one exists. But enterprise technology managers are proving you can get what you want by pushing vendors to innovate -- a trend that may be growing because of the economic downturn.

Symantec details grand product integration scheme
10/14/08
Symantec Tuesday detailed a plan to further integrate its diverse products under a common management platform as well as support third-party products by means of its published interfaces.

Boston College converts chapel into high security data center
10/13/08
Boston College's IT department has gotten absolutely religious about securing data three years after a big breach made. So it might seem only fitting that the school's new data center resides inside a former chapel on land acquired from the Catholic Archdiocese.

U.S. Army gets tough with desktop software policy
10/07/08
The U.S Army gets tougher on enforcing desktop security policy by adding compliance-management software to about 11,000 desktops used at the Pentagon and other facilities in order to monitor for unauthorized applications.

Symantec updates DLP endpoint, antispam gateway
10/07/08
Symantec plans to release updated versions of its antispam gateway and data-loss-prevention agent.

Credit-card security standard issued after much debate
10/01/08
The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, the organization that sets technical requirements for processing credit- and debit-cards, today issued revised security rules, while also indicating next year it will focus on new guidelines for end-to-end encryption, payment machines and virtualization.

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