Techbits: AOL security, Digital archives, Dual-network phones ...
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America Online Inc. is packaging new features to combat viruses, spam and spyware in response to growing online security threats. Subscribers will be able to get the free tools
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AOL is getting serious about security - if you pay them an extra $1.95 to $4.95 a month. Grandma&#39;s favorite ISP has teamed with RSA Security to offer an optional login service that provides a second layer of authentication to prevent identity theft.
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(InfoWorld) - Enterprise companies will soon begin offloading many of their network security responsibilities to telecommunications and Internet service providers and save vast amounts of time and money doing so, if AT&T has its way. Speaking to the assembled crowd at the IDC Security Forum in New York on Wednesday, Edward Amoroso, chief security officer for AT&T's services division, predicted that enterprises will begin adopting more "virtual" security capabilities from their ISPs and bandwidth providers in the coming years as those companies are better positioned to do battle with botnets, spam, and denial-of-service )DoS) threats. Based on the bandwidth-providers' existing abilities to see spikes in traffic that are tell-tale signs of botnet, spam, or other malware activity -- long before enterprises can see evidence of the attacks on their own -- Amoroso contends that companies will soon concede the process of fighting the threats and turn to companies such as AT&T for help. "We think that security at the perimeter should be virtual, which is a somewhat controversial concept, because a lot of time, effort, and career capital has already been spent securing the perimeter," Amoroso said. "But we think a lot of existing technologies there are running out of legs, and simply running firewalls at the gateway is no longer a valuable proposition." The United States government's Telecommunications act of 1996 prevents carriers from approaching customers and marketing services to them based on any trends they observe on the end users' network connections. However, the companies can already identify much of the spam and malware activity being carried out in the pipe, based on their massive infrastructure, and should be enlisted to help solve security issues, he said. For threats such as distributed DoS that can easily be thwarted upstream, the CIO said, it makes little sense for companies to continue to invest in new technologies and staff when the carriers could easily detect and snuff out the campaigns ahead of time. "How do you stop DDoS at the edge? The physics just don't make sense. When these attacks happen, the customers' routers will already be dead," said Amoroso. "We think the idea that the pipe should be dumb is strange; with spam accounting for 90 percent of all traffic on the e-mail pipe, we're delivering nothing but more attacks, malware, and junk. If people want us to keep doing that we can, but why would they want us to keep doing that when we can see it, scoop it, study it, and stop it?" Lest someone should contend that AT&T and other carriers are merely licking their chops at the prospect of adding pricey new security services to their products, the expert said security services should eventually become a set of non-optional capabilities included with the purchase of ISP and telephony services. Much as the carrier community focused on providing faster services in the 1980s and added tools to improve quality to their products in the 1990s, the CIO said that security services will become a de facto element of all the capabilities that the firms market. While early adopters are already paying a premium to use the security capabilities offered by carriers today, eventually the price should be blended into the packages of capabilities that companies buy from providers such as AT&T, the expert predicted. At the same time, AT&T and other carriers would have to sacrifice their existing businesses of selling firewall management and intrusion detection-type systems into enterprises, he said. But the move to push security tools to the bandwidth providers is one that has been made even more likely by the complexity of those technologies. "I think we'll come out of this decade thinking it was silly to have separate perimeter security systems, it doesn't make sense to build the network and overlay security as an afterthought," Amoroso said. "We have as large of a managed security services business as anyone, but this work is better off embedded in the pipeline." Emerging mobile and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services will also include integrated security capabilities that replace many of the systems being implemented to protect those technologies today, according to the AT&T CIO. "We can virtualize these things, and any carrier can do it; this is the direction that perimeter security is headed in. It's not a collision course, but rather something very pleasant, as finally there's something smooth and simple to solve these problems," he said. "It's absurd that all we hear today is that the carrier plays no role in all of this, that companies should do it at the edge. We know it's a lot of work, but we're already prepared to do it."
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Technology problems arise as Sprint and Nextel merge. Also: Symantec buys Veritas.... Illinois' governor bans violent video games for minors & hellip;.  and more.
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The Justice Department begins a nationwide crackdown against spammers. Also: The EU extends its review of Microsoft's deal with Time Warner & hellip;. Sprint finds a third cable partner to offer VoIP & hellip;. and more.
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IAC/InterActive spins off the online travel service. Also: PCs sprout second brain.... Nielson ratings show broadband users surpassing dialup.... and more.
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TechWeb - Multipurpose cell phones, data-storing pocket knives: Can you fear me now?
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Also: Hollywood hints at digital film system. Read these stories and more from around the Web on News.com Extra.
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America Online subscribers will receive a raft of new and enhanced security services as part of their standard package with the launch of AOL 9.0 Security Edition, the latest upgrade of the company&#39;s fee-based, consumer-focused online service.
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(InfoWorld) - I search, therefore I am. That was the rude lesson AOL subscribers learned last month when the Internet giant thoughtlessly released reams of data on searches that its users conducted. Sure, the usersâ identities were removed, but as people quickly figured out, you can tell a lot about who somebody is by looking at what theyâre looking for. Now it turns out that those Blackberries and smart phones we drag around with us are talking, too. Mobile device security company Trust Digital reported last month that used smartphones and PDAs for sale on eBay can reveal reams of information â 27,000 pages, to be exact â about their former owners. The company purchased 10 mobile devices from eBay and salvaged data, including personal banking and tax information, corporate client records, product road maps, computer passwords, and contact address books, the company said in a statement. Most of the data was in the flash memory of the devices because the previous owners didnât properly cleanse the equipment using a âhard resetâ that would have erased the data. With the use of multifunction mobile devices growing rapidly within corporations, mobile data leaks are already a big problem, and enterprises should be investigating software to secure data on mobile devices, Trust Digital said. Luckily, the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is on the job. At this monthâs CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment show, the group plans to announce new, open specifications to embed trust into mobile devices that will give added protection against data loss, as well as malicious code and spam, according to Mark Redman, principal engineer at Freescale Semiconductor and a member of TCGâs Mobile Phone Working Group, which is developing the new specification. The specifications will cover areas such as user data protection and privacy, allowing users to protect personally identifiable information, address books, and other credentials from being accessed. TCG isnât saying when mobile devices will be made available with security based on the new specifications, but a six- to 18-month gap isnât uncommon, said a TCG spokeswoman.
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Readers remark on our This Day in Tech feature. Plus: Links to our most popular blog posts.
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Is it love on the rebound with AOL? Will Microsoft wait? Will Google win? Stay tuned!
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Plus: File sharing growing like a Weed. [News.com Extra]
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Vista tops list of tech disappointments...NYT and Henry Blodget weigh in on Google's threat to Microsoft...More people are "Googling" themselves and more...
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Canon G9 review...Photophlow gives Flickr a new face...Mozilla's Weave project...People paparazzi...new SLR rumors...hardware hacking.
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Worried about spyware? spam? "spim"? AOL wants to set your mind at rest. Also: Putting patches in place.
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Letters: Going deeper on the question of security and operating systems.