Ellen Messmer - Author - PC World Australia

Stories by Ellen Messmer

Article | 8/08/2008 Speakers expose virtualization, OS security gaps

Will infrastructure virtualization sweep away existing switching structures while failing to grant benefits of performance, cost or improved security?...

Article | 6/08/2008 Conference bios show funny side of security

What's so funny about information security? A lot if you read some of the bios that security experts have written about themselves in the official Bla...

Article | 6/08/2008 Symantec buys nSuite for virtualization security, management

Symantec is acquiring nSuite Technologies for an undisclosed price to build out its portfolio of virtualization security and management technologies.

Article | 5/08/2008 McAfee outlines DLP integration strategy with Reconnex

With McAfee buying data-loss-prevention vendor Reconnex for US$46 million in cash, the question now is how will McAfee move forward in the future to b...

Article | 1/08/2008 Black Hat/DefCon: Welcome to the funhouse

The Black Hat conference and its post-event, DefCon, promise to be a security funhouse in the coming week, as experts in Las Vegas seek to shock and a...

Article | 22/07/2008 Open-source software a security risk, study claims

Open source software is a significant security risk for corporations that use it because in many cases, the open source community fails to adhere to m...

Article | 17/07/2008 Hunt for the elusive rootkit 'Rustock.C' revealed

Rootkits are software code designed to hide from detection. So Kaspersky Lab's hunt for the elusive Rustock.C rootkit, rumored to exist for almost two...

Article | 17/07/2008 Insider threat looms as San Francisco crisis plays out

The unfolding cliffhanger in San Francisco this week -- in which a city network administrator has been arrested for allegedly holding the network host...

Article | 2/07/2008 Diary of a deliberately spammed housewife

For Tracy Mooney, a married mother of three in the US, the decision to abandon cyber-sense and invite e-mail spam into her life for a month by partici...

Article | 27/06/2008 History lesson: The origins of wiki, blog and other high-tech lingo

Though sometimes it's hard to pin down exactly who deserves the credit — or blame — here's a shot a some of the more familiar terms.

Article | 25/06/2008 The origins of high-tech's made-up lingo

Technology we take for granted today was new not so long ago, and somebody had to name it. Though sometimes it's hard to pin down exactly who deserves...

Article | 17/06/2008 How to salvage data lost to Gpcode.ak encryptor virus

The Gpcode.ak virus, which encrypts files on the victim's desktop and demands a ransom to decrypt them, uses encryption that so far has proven too str...

Article | 13/06/2008 Wall Street becoming Linux stronghold

Wall Street firms increasingly are buying into Linux, but some still need convincing that open source licensing and support models won't make using th...

Article | 6/06/2008 New crypto virus a looming threat

The emergence of a variant on a virus that encrypts the victim's data with a strong 1,024-bit algorithm so the victim can't unscramble it without payi...

Article | 6/06/2008 Six burning questions about network security

Security issues often seem to smolder more than burn, but these six are certainly capable of lighting a fire under IT professionals at a moment's noti...