Stories by: Matt Hines

Web-borne malware attacks will continue to flourish in 2008, according to the latest research report filed by scanning and acceleration specialists Blue Coat.

There's nothing like telling a good horror story to encourage your employees -- from senior executives to rank-and-file workers -- to do their part in improving IT security.

Many companies spend a small fortune and deploy a small army to secure themselves from the many security threats lurking these days. But all those efforts can come to naught when making any of these common mistakes. The results can range from embarrassing to devastating, but security experts say that all are easily avoidable.

Communicating the importance of security risk and the need for related investment to those less familiar is no easy task, but industry experts agree there are a few techniques that you can follow as a CSO, CISO, or project manager to help get your point across and curry favor with other business leaders.

Vendors of data leakage prevention (DLP) systems claim that customers will avoid integration issues by using packaged tools that encompass all the different elements of the technology, but some early adopters of DLP are already running into serious problems.

IBM is aggressively expanding its security portfolio in hopes of becoming the de facto source of advice and technology for businesses looking to adopt high-level IT governance and risk management strategies -- a transformation among customers that officials at Big Blue cite as both ongoing and inevitable.

Far from being a major player in IT security today, Google has ambitious designs on becoming a big name in the burgeoning hosted security market, begging the question, Will your organization ever be ready to let the world's largest information retrieval company safeguard your crown jewels?

Companies that specialize in helping businesses speed delivery of their applications and Web content are increasingly involving themselves in IT security as the continued proliferation of systems-defense technologies has become a potential roadblock to the performance and quality of the services they already provide.

Organizations that experience data breaches are paying more than ever to recover from the incidents and retain customers once the events become public knowledge, according to a new research report.

Driven by market consolidation and the ongoing efforts of large IT security vendors to meld DLP (data leakage prevention) tools into their broader portfolios, some experts contend that the technologies will increasingly become perceived as product features and less so as stand-alone platforms.