While complaints can be heard far and wide that it's hard to find the right IT security experts to defend the nation's cyberspace, the real problem in hiring security professionals is the roadblocks put up by lawyers and human resources personnel and a complete lack of understanding of geek culture, says security consultant Winn Schwartau.

According to security firm Kindsight, these are the Top Ten Worst Botnets this year.

Many CIOS and chief information security officers are struggling to adapt security practices to a changing environment that includes cloud computing, social media and tablets , according to a survey of 1,850 such IT pros.

A survey of 650 information and security professionals about how the "bring your own device" (BYOD) trend is impacting their organizations finds one-quarter of them forbid use of personally owned devices such as smartphones and tablets on the network. However, the majority that do often lack meaningful policies or security controls related to these devices.

Home entertainment today is often provided through a clutter of TVs, tablets, and computers, along with TV specialty boxes for yet more streaming video or music services. But some Hollywood studios are hoping to find better ways to deliver paid content to consumers directly to hard drives and flash storage, according to Cryptography Research, which is working on a futuristic project to do that.

It's been a month of crippling denial-of-service attacks on websites operated by U.S. banks and financial services firms. A terrorist organization called Al-Qassam takes credit online, but now the attacks are being blamed on Iran.

Don't fear the "bring your own device" (BYOD) trend -- take a chance and find out if it works in your organization, say IT managers in the financial industry that let employees make use of their personal smartphones and tablets for work.

The amount of mobile Android malware has surged this year, from a count of 30,000 malware specimens in June to almost 175,000 last month, according to Trend Micro's Security Roundup report for the third quarter of this year.

IBM today widened its security offerings with products and cloud-based services focused broadly on both mobile devices and Big Data, both areas where IBM foresees growth as enterprises sort out their strategies toward both.

A teaching hospital based in Israel, Hadassah University Hospital, has devised a plan to be able to support the "bring your own device" (BYOD) wishes voiced by medical staff and students clamoring to use their own mobile devices, while also bringing to bear management and security controls.

Dennis Technology Labs released the results of its latest round of antivirus tests seeking to determine the effectiveness of several commercial anti-malware products, with Kaspersky and Symantec coming out on top.

With Microsoft Windows 8 soon to arrive, aspects of the new operating system related to anti-malware protection and other security features are getting a lot of attention.

At Symantec Research Labs, Symantec's internal research and development arm, there are a number of projects underway which are likely to emerge as products and services within the next 18 months. Sanjay Sawhney, the senior director of research, product development, recently showed off three projects the company is developing.

Hactivist group Anonymous has had a serious falling out with WikiLeaks, an ally it long respected as a fighter for providing sensitive information to the public, often surreptitiously obtained from sources in governments and businesses.

Trying to get computer forensics data out of mobile smartphones and tablets in order to conduct investigations is hard -- often much harder than on PCs, laptops or Macs -- and experts say that forensics tools need to improve.