Negar Salek

Antivirus product sales will slow in Australia in the next five years as enterprises broaden their use of security technologies. Organisations that block access to sites such as Facebook are limiting the use of critical business tools necessary to a Generation Y workforce, argued Symantec executives in Sydney on Tuesday.
The fourth annual Gartner IT Security Summit kicks off next month and SC met with Andrew Walls, Gartner's local security analyst, for a sneak peak at the event's hot topics. Symantec has announced that it will acquire Sydney-based security vendor PC Tools. In the lead up to next month’s conference, Gartner’s local security analyst reveals data security and cloud computing will be hot topics at this year’s Security Summit. Gartner analysts from around the world are arriving in Australia in preparation for next month’s Gartner Security Summit in Sydney.
Information security experts have given their overall thumbs-up to the ALRC’s mandatory data breach disclosure recommendations, but admit the course of action needs fine-tuning.
The introduction of mandatory data breach disclosure laws in Australia has been set in motion. The opening ceremony for the much anticipated Beijing Olympic Games is only hours away and security experts have sent out an eleventh hour warning to internet users – ‘think twice before you click.’ The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced the availability of an online FAQ and online tool to help raise awareness for the recently discovered hazardous DNS flaw. The majority of spam is currently sent from the US but experts predict it won’t be long till developing nations take the lead. The first months of 2008 has seen spam levels rise with the economic situation and Olympics adding fuel to the fire. Australians have lost nearly $120,000 to the Olympic ticket scammers, according to the NSW Office of Fair Trading's latest update. Is it safe to take your mobile devices with you to the Beijing Olympic Games? The final report outlining the amendments to Australia’s Privacy Act will be released on August 11, possbily ending almost two years of speculation surrounding the inclusion of Australia’s inaugural mandatory data breach disclosure laws. The days of visiting a trusted website and expecting it to be safe are done and dusted. Reports have emerged that Apple’s much-hyped iPhone 3G has been hacked only five days after its world-wide release.
Security vendor, F-Secure is days away from capturing its unprecedented one millionth piece of malware. Secure Computing is warning of a new Trojan in the wild that is infecting multi-media files on a victim’s hard disk.
SC caught up with Harry Archer, principal security consultant and head of security practice at BT Australia recently to discuss the current state of security in Australia, or it seemed, the lack of it.