IBM's move to buy Internet Security Systems (ISS) is another example of the company's strategy to grow its product offerings and expertise in key areas through acquisition.

Statistics could prove a handy ally in helping companies large and small to ward off cyberattacks, according to one security expert.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded a US$1.24 million three-year grant to Stanford University and software vendors Coverity and Symantec. The grant will fund daily security audits and analysis of more than 40 open-source projects including Apache, Linux, Mozilla, MySQL and PostgreSQL.

The creator of Loverspy, software to surreptitiously observe individuals' online activities, has been indicted for allegedly violating US federal computer privacy laws, local and federal authorities announced Friday.

A Florida man was found guilty of stealing data from customer information management company Acxiom Friday. The prosecution estimates that Scott Levine and his defunct bulk e-mail marketing firm Snipermail.com stole more than 1.6 billion customer records by hacking into an Acxiom server.

The Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC), a group of IT companies and public interest groups, is hoping to succeed where a previous vendor organisation failed in tackling the global problem of spyware. The ASC released an agreed-upon draft definition of spyware Tuesday that it hopes will promote public comment and ultimately result in users becoming better educated about the dangers of spyware.

Standards body the Liberty Alliance Project believes it can contribute something currently missing from the ongoing debate on tackling identity theft -- a lexicon of terms defining exactly what constitutes ID theft. The alliance, which focuses on developing open standards for federated network identity, revealed its work on the lexicon Tuesday.