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Santa Barbara Health Exchange: User-Driven Security Prevails A pioneering healthcare data exchange project in Santa Barbara County, California, could be an early example of how secure community-wide clinical data sharing can improve both personal healthcare and community-wide public health initiatives. DES Is Dead: NIST Declares Standard Officially Obsolete The venerable Data Encryption Standard (DES), called the "most important algorithm ever made" by one of the world's foremost experts in electronic security, has been declared officially obsolete by the US government. News Briefs, Scott L. Andresen [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When former White House counterterrorism and cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke testified before the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks that the US government could and should have done a better job preventing the attacks, he became a lightning rod for both praise and criticism. Clarke retired after the February 2003 release of the US National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, which signaled the transfer of responsibility for cybersecurity from the White House to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was still not fully operational at the time. He is now chairman of Good Harbor Consulting, a Security consulting firm. Here he shares his views about what those responsible for bettering network security are doing right - and wrong. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Peter Neumann, principal scientist at the SRI International Computer Science Laboratory, has been warning about electronic voting systems' insecurity for several years. Neumann is still at it, and still alarmed. "I've been fighting this battle for 20 years. What's new?" he asks. The question is now rhetorical, for this past December has seen an explosion of public activity around the issue. Neumann's wilderness is now jam-packed with a cacophony of voices. However, the looming question is whether the activity signals a willingness to build consensus around a commonly accepted e-voting security apparatus, or is, instead, the preparation for a competing stakeholders' titanic clash in the billion-dollar-plus market of e-voting systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The number of virus and worm reports and security bulletins documenting these trends has multiplied. However, despite all this information, does anyone actually know how many vulnerabilities and attacks truly exist? Analysts who follow these trends say that the rise in reports is simply due to more people monitoring networks for vulnerabilities. Other causes are the recent, rapid expansion in "always on" broadband access on devices used by unsophisticated users at the very edge of the network, and the automated tools that malware creators use to take advantage of these often unguarded connections. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The USA government's executive and legislative branches have quickly heeded recommendations from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the "9/11 Commission") to improve information-sharing capabilities between federal agencies and among federal, state, and local officials. Both the legislative and executive branches have for the first time established firm deadlines for agency heads to submit plans for architectures and procedures that will enhance data sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

New research suggests that phishing attacks, although increasing rapidly, aren't proliferating on a wildfire basis. Instead, they might actually he controlled by a small number of criminal organizations, and dollar losses once estimated at more than US$1 billion might be just above one tenth of that. However, the psychological toll phishing scams place on both service providers and end users can still cripple e-commerce [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]