encryption

Organizations have spent vast sums of money on security systems and, when deployed and operated correctly, they play a key role in safeguarding the organization. However, most systems have one critical dependency: The traffic flowing through must be readable.

Two videos showcase how a fatal flaw allowed the Allies to crack the German code machine in World War II.

As consumers, we've been taught to trust the padlock icon that appears on the address bar of our browsers. We're told it's a sign our communication with a website is safe. But an incident this week involving Google and a Turkish security company belies that notion.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for companies contemplating entrusting a cloud-computing vendor with their data is the risk of unintended data exposure. A lot of data is sensitive. It might contain employees' financial information, patients' statutorily protected health information, other regulated information or proprietary intellectual property. Quite often, companies feel more control when they keep that sort of data in-house. But the risk that a cloud vendor might not handle your information as securely as you'd like can be mitigated.

Losing your USB flash drive before a big presentation is a terrible way to start a Monday. Losing a drive that also contains valuable personal data or confidential company information will ruin your whole week—and maybe your career. Luckily, Windows users can easily hedge their bets against such disasters by using the free BitLocker To Go utility to quickly encrypt portable drives.

Valuable data stored in the cloud is sure to be a target. What can be done to make it harder to steal?

Encryption can be a bit of a double-edged sword for organizations. It is an effective and essential tool for protecting sensitive data, but it often comes with a healthy side of user confusion and help desk calls. Microsoft hopes to simplify the process of implementing and managing BitLocker data encryption with the launch of Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Management (MBAM) 2.0 Beta 2.

Sophos today announced a free anti-virus defense app for Google Android devices which works via the Sophos cloud-based service. Separately Sophos also made available Android and Apple iOS apps for securing files held in the cloud file-storage service Dropbox.

CipherCloud this week broadened its encryption gateway support to include support for Microsoft's SharePoint, as well as the services Yammer and SAP's SuccessFactors.

Businesses should start leaning on vendors now to upgrade applications that use less than 1024-bit encryption before it's too late.

Lose your encryption key? Up to five years in jail for child porn or terrorism, two for other crimes.

Login data for as many as 6.5 million LinkedIn users has been posted on a Russian hacker site. LinkedIn hasn't confirmed the breach, but Tweets confirm many real passwords are on the list. Change your password. Get a password vault. Use different passwords for important sites.