It’s the Fourth of July in the US today, when Americans are celebrating Independence Day, but IT security vendors have spent the weekend issuing warnings on phishing and infected emails taking advantage of the celebrations.

Cybercriminals are opting for more lucrative targeted attacks, rather than for the traditional mass spam campaigns, according to a new report by Cisco.

Lockheed Martin is teaming with American Electric Power to offer the Palisade cybersecurity product for the smart electricity grid.

JanusNET – a leading IT security vendor in Australia – is in the process of setting up in the UK and Infosecurity managed to talk to the firm’s managing director Greg Colla late last month.

M86 Security is reporting a malicious spam campaign is now under way, fooling internet users into downloading an “attached statement” with a message that their credit card is overdue.

Trusteer, the web browser security specialist, is reporting a surge in the number of people’s computers infected with the Hiloti trojan. The firm says that, in the UK, infection rates have tripled in the last ten days.

Hackers are reported to have gained unauthorised access to a network of US defence industry news portals and downloaded sensitive user information that could be used in spear phishing and other types of targeted attacks.

A Symantec researcher claims to have discovered a new type of Android malware threat in the shape of class loading hijacking, which effectively means that hackers can remotely take over most, if not all, aspects of a smartphone or tablet computer.

The average cost of compliance associated with storing unstructured data is $2.1 million per year, according to a report prepared by the Ponemon Institute for software firm Novell.

It seems that the last database upload on filesharing sites from the LulzSec hacktivist group – which publicly disbanded last weekend – was infected with malware.