Stories by Jaikumar Vijayan

Chad Fulgham, a former technology executive at the now-defunct Lehman Brothers investment firm, has been hired by the FBI to fill its CIO position.

About a year ago, a senior manager at Pilz GmbH left the company to work at a rival firm -- and took some classified data about an unfinished vision-based camera safety system with him.

Starting early next year, air travelers will have to provide their birth date and gender, as well as their full names to the airline when making flight reservations.

With a faltering economy resulting in increased jobs cuts and corporate belt tightening, security analysts are warning companies to be especially vigilant about protecting their data and networks against disgruntled employees.

Privacy and civil rights groups are welcoming legislation that proposes tough new standards for conducting searches of laptops and other electronic devices at US borders.

Companies that are globalizing their operations or outsourcing work to offshore locations shouldn't overlook behavioral and cultural differences when developing their security risk-management plans, according to a survey of IT managers and end users in 10 countries that was released Tuesday by Cisco Systems.

The high-profile sabotage this month of the city of San Francisco's fiber backbone network clearly shows both the extent of damage a disgruntled employee can cause and the need for controls to mitigate the risk of such actions.

IT managers and analysts are expressing surprise at the amount of time it appears to be taking officials at the City of San Francisco to regain full control of the city's FiberWAN network after a disgruntled network administrator allegedly locked access to it by resetting administrative passwords to its switches and routers.

An IT specialist at a US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centre in the US who in January lost an external hard drive containing sensitive data belonging to over 1.5 million people failed to take proper measures to protect the data.

Multiple hacker groups are using a "construction kit" supplied by the author of a Trojan horse program discovered in October 2006 to develop and unleash more dangerous variants of the original malware.

Members of a US House subcommittee blasted Department of Homeland Security CIO Scott Charbo for what they called a lack of leadership on information security issues and questioned his willingness to make needed fixes &#8212 and even his ability to head the agency's IT organization.

A US House subcommittee investigating cybersecurity vulnerabilities at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has blasted the agency's CIO for his alleged lack of leadership on key security issues. Subcommittee members also questioned DHS CIO Scott Charbo's willingness to make needed security fixes and his ability to head the agency's IT operations.

An audit of US-based Piedmont Hospital that was initiated by the US Department of Health and Human Services in March is raising concerns in the health-care industry about the prospect of more enforcement actions related to the data security requirements of the US federal HIPAA legislation.

Despite some progress in recent years, most US federal agencies still have significant gaps in their information security controls, according to Gregory Wilshusen, director of information security issues at the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

California legislators will hold a hearing to debate on a proposed bill that would create new data security and breach notification requirements for all organizations processing credit and debit card transactions in the state.