Data Security

For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard that “users are the weakest link in the chain,” or even worse, “you can’t stop stupid.” This long-held view is not terribly productive to advancing information security, and it certainly doesn’t endear the security professional to the general public.

Hyatt Hotels Corp. listed 250 hotels that could have exposed data about payment cards, including cardholder names, payment card numbers and internal verification codes and expiration dates.

Internet security issues took a decidedly back seat during the GOP presidential debate Thursday night with the candidates managing to squeeze in a just few thoughts on encryption, the Office of Personnel Management breach and Edward Snowden.

HSBC bank is informing some of its customers that their personal information, including Social Security and various bank account numbers, may have been exposed to a third party.

In a profession that’s designed around problem identification, it’s no wonder security professionals are often labeled “contrarians” or “trouble makers.” From the outside in, it looks like security’s job is to find problems even when operations are seemingly gliding along smoothly. Security pros are trained to slog through logs and find anomalies. 

In a global survey of more than 200 executives and IT managers, 24.6 percent of respondents indicated they would be willing to pay hackers a ransom to prevent them from leaking critically sensitive stolen data.

Journalist Matthew Keys is challenging the recommendation that he serve a prison sentence of more than seven years for conspiring to help the hacktivist group Anonymous.

After Hacking Team's data was leaked, Kaspersky researchers used reports of a discussion between Hacking Team's CEO and an exploit seller to discover a new zero-day vulnerability.