Information freedom for open source users.

A new study of 45 U.S. organizations found that cyber crime — including Web attacks, malicious code, and rogue insiders — costs each one of them $3.8 million per year, on average, and results in about one successful attack each week.

Is your company’s data under surveillance by foreign spybots looking for any competitive advantages or weaknesses they can exploit? This might sound farfetched, but such electronic espionage is real. It’s an insidious security threat that’s a lot more common than you probably realize.

As an IT or security executive, determining whether your organization is under attack via this seemingly undetectable threat — and putting in place adequate technology and procedural safeguards — should be a high priority. The stakes are too high to ignore the problem.

A talk on China’s military cyber-attack capabilities has been pulled from the Black Hat security conference schedule following pressure from Taiwanese and Chinese agencies.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has so far failed to live up to its responsibility to coordinate a national cyber security R&D agenda, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released this week.

As a result, the U.S risks falling behind other countries on cyber security matters, and being unable to adequately protect its interests in cyberspace, the 36-page report (PDF document) warned.

I spend exactly zero time worrying that black helicopters will swoop down and impose a new world order. I don’t believe that the CIA killed JFK, and I don’t think the Air Force is hiding a UFO in the desert — which is to say, I generally don’t take conspiracy theories seriously.

Targeted cyber attacks of the sort that hit Google and more than 30 other tech firms earlier this year are testing enterprise security models in new ways and pose a more immediate threat to sensitive data than a full-fledged cyber war.

WASHINGTON — A top FBI official warned today that many cyber-adversaries of the U.S. have the ability to access virtually any computer system, posing a risk that’s so great it could “challenge our country’s very existence.”

Is the United States in the middle of a cyber war? You’d think the answer to that question would be obvious. But apparently it depends on whom you ask.

Case in point: At this week’s RSA security conference, Scott Borg, director and chief economist from the U.S. Cyber Consequence Unit think tank, declared that we are already deep into a cyber war.

Cloud security loomed over the RSA Conference this week as a major concern of business, but worry about the threat of cyber war was also strong, with officials from the White House and FBI weighing in to encourage private participation in government efforts to defend information and communications networks.

SAN FRANCISCO — Businesses are still trying to figure out what to make of social networking. The knee-jerk impulse at some companies is to ban its use because it’s insecure and seen as unproductive, while at others it’s viewed as, in fact, the way a lot of people now get work done.

The U.S. government, if confronted in a cyber war today, would not come out on top, a former U.S. director of national intelligence said Tuesday. “If the nation went to war today, in a cyber war, we would lose,” Mike McConnell told a U.S. Senate committee. “We’re the most vulnerable. We’re the most connected. We have the most to lose.”

Most firms have experienced some kind of cyber attack in the last year, according to research released Monday by Symantec. The 2010 State of Enterprise Security study reveals that 75 percent of organizations experienced cyber attacks and 42 percent of organizations rate security as their top issue, more than natural disasters, terrorism, and traditional crime combined.

In a partnership that may inspire some to put their tinfoil hats on, Google has reportedly turned to the National Security Agency for help in improving the company’s security infrastructure.

The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a proposed bill that is designed to bolster federal cyber security research and development activities, and stimulate the growth of a cyber security workforce in the country.

Microsoft will release its emergency patch for Internet Explorer (IE) on Thursday, the company said today as it also admitted that attacks can be hidden inside rigged Office documents.

Top Chinese search engine Baidu.com has sued its U.S. domain registrar over a hack that took down the Web site, alleging negligence by the U.S. company, Baidu said Wednesday.

The malicious software used to steal information from companies such as Google contains code that links it to China, a security researcher said Tuesday

China on Tuesday denied any role in alleged cyber attacks on Indian government offices, calling China itself the biggest victim of hackers.

Juniper Networks and Symantec said Thursday that they were investigating a widespread cyber-espionage incident that has hit dozens of technology companies, including Google and Adobe.

The attacks on Google and more than 30 other Silicon Valley companies by agents allegedly working for China is focusing renewed attention on the issue of state-sponsored cyber attacks and how the U.S. government should respond to them.