Mobile computing may be convenient, but it's also inherently risky. When you drag your laptop to the coffee shop or bring it along on your travels, you're making all your private data and one of your most expensive possessions a big, fat target for sticky-fingered thieves. And unlike traditional theft targets like jewelry or wallets, a laptop is an easy steal--the baddies just need to wait for you to turn your back, then grab the computer and run. In some cases, a criminal doesn't even need to steal your notebook. He can simply pull your sensitive data out of thin air.

Microsoft has launched a new anti-piracy campaign in China, which intends to highlight the security risks of buying counterfeit software.

End users everywhere are demanding that IT executives figure out how to let them bring their own smartphones and laptops to work. Yet even as consumerisation tops lists of IT priorities for 2012, vendors are taking new approaches to security as a majority of CIOs worry that the BYO pendulum has swung too far and will, through the normalisation of off-net mobility, create new business risks due to unaddressed shortcomings in management and security strategies.

Security: You either have it you don't. It's a matter of degrees or, as the experts prefer to think of it, layers. The more varieties of security you have, the better the odds your goods can be protected successfully from intrusion or theft.

The microcontroller used to control the charging of Apple's laptop batteries could be attacked by malware in a way that might damage the cells, a researcher has reported in advance of a presentation at the forthcoming Black Hat security conference.

Business travelers willing to give Windows 8 a spin have a noteworthy option in the HP Folio Elitebook Folio 9470m.

If you travel to China or Russia, assume government or industry spooks will steal your data and install spyware. Here's how to thwart them

In June 2007, Apple released the iPhone, and the device quickly took off to become a major brand in the smartphone market. Yet when the iPhone shipped, security on the mobile operating system was nearly nonexistent. Missing from the initial iOS (then called iPhone OS) were many of the security features that modern-day desktop software has as a matter of course, such as data-execution protection (DEP) and address-space layout randomization (ASLR). Apple's cachet lured security researchers to test the platform, and in less than a month, a trio had released details on the first vulnerability: an exploitable flaw in the mobile Safari browser.