Stories by: Grant Gross

The U.S. government has taken several steps to combat identity theft during the past two years, including increased prosecutions of criminals and decreased use of Social Security numbers to identify constituents, according to a report released Tuesday.

Eleven people have been charged or indicted in a massive identity theft and computer fraud scheme involving some of the largest data breaches in recent U.S. history, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are asking a federal court to order the US Department of Justice to turn over records about the agency's tracking of mobile phone users.

A former employee of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency has pleaded guilty to charges of fraudulently obtaining US citizenship and accessing a US government computer system to unlawfully find information about her relatives and the Islamic organization Hizballah.

The value of the top 20 U.S. government IT contracts in fiscal year 2007 will be US$118 billion, less than half the value of the top 20 government IT contracts in 2006, according to a report released Tuesday.

Governments and businesses face a variety of cybersecurity threats, but they also need to allow for increasing demands from computer users across the globe, the former information security advisor for the U.K. Ministry of Defense said Wednesday.

A group of smart card and smart chip vendors are launching a campaign to talk up the security and privacy features of their products, even as researchers raise questions about their use in passports.

A former IT system auditor for a US government agency faces a five-year prison sentence on a computer hacking charge after secretly monitoring his supervisor's e-mail and computer use, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has proposed a next-generation Internet with built-in security and functionality that connects all kinds of devices, with researchers challenging the government agency to look at the Internet as a "clean slate."

Your Internet service provider isn't to blame if your company is hit with a distributed denial-of-service attack. That was the verdict of IT security professionals in a mock trial staged by Gartner at its IT Security Summit last month, in which ISPs were charged with not doing enough to keep subscribers' computers from being compromised and used as tools in attacks on corporate networks.

Tatiana Platt, chief trust officer and senior vice president of America Online, carries the reputation of the AOL brand on her shoulders. Security has become a core component of ensuring the integrity of that brand. CSO spoke to Platt recently about her title, online security and the challenges of communicating security to children, retirees and everyone in between.