Danny Bradbury rounds up the most important news in the security space from the last week.

The recent outbreak of swine flu has thrown up a number of topics related to information security ranging from secure sharing of data between health professionals, to spam / phishing and issues around remote working.

Information security technology is of little use if employees unwittingly give up log-in details, passwords and other sensitive information to hackers using social engineering.

Heartland Payment Systems has revealed that it lost US$12.6m as a result of its 2008 data breach, in the same week that it finally regained official Payment Card Industry Data Security standard (PCI DSS) compliance.

Hackers are starting to create fake search engine sites to divert hapless internet users to malware infected websites, says PandaLabs, the research operation of Panda Security.

Splunk, the vendor who calls itself “the google for data centres” are seeing an increase in sales due to the high crime that comes hand in hand with an economic downturn.

The fourth annual Global Security Challenge Competition where security entrepreneurs compete for up to US$500 000 in cash grants, is open for entries until 15 June 2009.

After several years of offering its products via a few specialist systems integrators in the UK, California’s Palo Alto Networks has established a formal presence in the country.

Police in Bavaria have arrested 11 people suspected of being members of the Hacksector cracking group, which maintains a dark hats forum of the same name on the Internet.

At the Infosecurity Europe show, London, on 30 April 2009, in a session titled ‘The dynamics of e-crime’, an audience member – an employee of the police central e-crime unit (PCeu) within the Metropolitan police service – interrupted the panel to decla…