The police virus continues to evolve, from scareware to ransomware – and a new version that can be described as very scary ware.

The cost to protect US government secrets reached more than $11 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2011, up 12% from FY 2010 and more than double the cost in FY 2001, according to a report by the National Archives.

Global defense organizations are expected to increase their cybersecurity budgets by an average of 6% over the next 12 months, according to a report by ICD Research and Strategic Defence Intelligence.

Computers in India’s primary eastern seafront naval establishment at Visakhapatnam were reportedly infected with spyware that sent classified information to IP addresses in China.

Along with the benefits that can be gained from Big Data come attendant security risks, notes Savvis’ Ed Moyle.

The attack surface in Windows 8 is bigger than in Windows 7 because of new components and changed processes, especially with the Metro interface, warns a McAfee researcher.

As if there aren’t already enough banking trojans to worry about, with SpyEye and Zeus, Carberp and OddJob, ESET is now warning that Gataka (aka Tatanga) – another man-in-the-browser trojan – appears ready for take-off.

Several major systems reported outages this weekend. Some, such as Pinterest, Netflix and Instagram, were caused when lightning took out Amazon’s servers in Virgina. Others were caused by the more mundane and predictable Leap Second.

Despite growing up in the computer age, Gen Y is less savvy about computer security than the Baby Boom generation, according to a survey by Check Point.

The US and Canada released a 12-point statement on privacy principles on Thursday, which provides common rules for crossborder sharing of personal information.