Week in Security: Federal Spending Forecast, Vendor Alliances

Last week was a busy one in IT security, with a fast-spreading worm, new products and alliances. Here's a rundown of some of the events, announcements and other happenings:

Federal spending on IT security will reach nearly $6 billion in 2008, up from $4.2 billion this year, according to a report released by market-research firm Input. Oversight from Congress and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget are key drivers of federal agency investments in IT security, the firm said.

NFR Security, a supplier of intrusion-detection products, named Neil Selvin as president and CEO. Selvin recently was chairman and CEO of Pivia, a provider of Web application acceleration software. He replaces interim CEO Kevin Burns, who remains with NFR Security as board chairman. The company also said it raised $7.5 million in new funding for marketing and sales initiatives.

Cisco Systems rolled out 14 security solutions and services, including security management, VPN and intrusion protection solutions. Cisco said the additions to promote its strategy of making security solutions transparent in IP networks.

Microsoft formed the Virus Information Alliance with Network Associates and Trend Micro. The alliance will provide Microsoft customers with information about the latest virus threats affecting Microsoft products.

NetScreen Technologies and Trend Micro announced an expanded alliance to integrate NetScreen's network security products with Trend Micro's antivirus protection. The first product from the partnership will be an integrated security gateway appliance for enterprise remote offices and telecommuters that combines antivirus, firewall, VPN, and intrusion prevention. See story.

A worm that pretends to be an e-mail from Microsoft's technical support spread quickly on the Internet Monday, antivirus vendors said. Dubbed Palyh, the mass-mailing worm can arrive as an e-mail from support@microsoft.com and comes with various subject lines, messages and file attachments. The worm deactivates after May 31, according to Kaspersky Labs. See story.

Trend Micro alerted its solution providers and customers about a bug in an anti-spam update to one of its security products that inadvertently blocked all incoming e-mail containing the letter P. The bug was in Rule #915, an update to Trend Micro eManager, an e-mail content security product that provides content filtering, spam blocking and reporting. Rule #915, released Tuesday, contained a routine that quarantined all incoming e-mail containing the letter P. Trend Micro discovered the bug soon after releasing Rule #915 and issued Rule #916 to fix it an hour and a half later. See story.

London-based security-services firm mi2g said the record for successful and verified digital attacks carried out in one month was broken on May 20. The first 20 days of May recorded a total of 20,182 attacks, breaking the record of 19,658 from January. The company's records date back to 1995.

Finjan Software appointed Elliott Lowe as vice president of marketing. Lowe recently was director of channel sales and marketing for Trend Micro.

Symantec announced Enterprise Firewall for IBM eServer iSeries 270 running Linux.

Check Point Software Technologies said its VPN-1 SecureClient is available in two new access modes, Hub Mode and Visitor Mode. Hub Mode allows administrators to route all remote access communications through a central gateway while Visitor Mode provides connectivity from any location regardless of network configuration of the firewall, NAT devices, or proxy servers.

eSoft said it partnered with Sophos on its new Desktop AntiVirus product, which provides antivirus protection for Microsoft Windows clients and servers. eSoft also announced an Intrusion Detection and Prevention SoftPak. The company partnered with Latis Networks on the product.

Citadel Security Software announced the general availability of Hercules 2.0, an automated vulnerability remediation product to protect Windows, Sun Solaris, and Red Hat Linux.

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