Protecting a single PC from viruses, malware, and other security risks is difficult enough. Now that the typical tech'd-out household contains multiple tablets and smartphones, as well as one or more PCs, securing all of them can quickly become a big hassle. Responding to all this hardware proliferation, McAfee has announced a new tool called LiveSafe that's designed to be a protective umbrella for pretty much all the devices we may juggle (Windows Phones and Chromebooks being the notable exceptions).

An app available for download from Apple's iOS App Store contains an embedded Trojan horse. And while the good news is that you're almost definitely safe from any malware danger, there's still reason for concern. The app itself is almost certainly harmless--and the malicious code is probably present unintentionally--but the fact that the code slipped through the App Store's review process isn't ideal.

A significant chunk of new malware is not spotted by antivirus programs with some threats remaining a mystery for as long as a month, an analysis of large enterprises by firewall vendor Palo Alto Networks has calculated.

There never will be a perfect computer or network defense. Computer security is a constantly elevating game of cat-and-mouse. As quickly as you address the latest threat, attackers have already developed a new technique to access your network and compromise your PCs. But if you focus on the fundamentals, you can minimize your risk and defend against most attacks.

Kaspersky Lab's Internet Security 2013 product contains a bug that can be exploited remotely, especially on local networks, to completely freeze the OS on computers running the software.

When it comes to keeping my PC secure, I rely on a small handful of tools: Windows 7's built-in firewall, Gmail's spam filtering, Web of Trust's helpful browser plug-in, and Microsoft's free Security Essentials anti-virus utility.

Like every new Windows release, Windows 8 is more secure than the operating systems that came before it. That's due in large part to three major enhancements: An increased emphasis on UEFI Secure Boot optimizations, the extension of the SmartScreen Filter across the operating system, and the default inclusion of a more robust version of Windows Defender, which now protects against all kinds of malware--not just spyware.

Most of us don't like paying for antivirus (AV) software, but at least home users can rely on one of the free options, such as Microsoft Security Essentials, avast!, or AVG Free.

The security community has grown to depend on some basic technologies in the fight against cyber thieves, such as antivirus software and firewalls. But are practitioners clinging to tools that outlived their usefulness long ago? Were those tools ever really useful to begin with?

It's become an all-too-common scam: A legitimate Web site pops up a window that looks just like a real security warning. It says there's something wrong with the computer, and click here to fix it. A few clicks later, the victim is paying out US$40 for some bogus software, called rogue antivirus.

To the average IT security practitioner, the idea of disabling antivirus on new machines might seem blasphemous. After all, weren't we all told in IT Security 101 that everyone needs AV to keep the malware and data thieves at bay?