Acunetix has launched the Acunetix Web Site Security Center, a comprehensive Web site security information center that educates visitors on the latest and most threatening Web application hacking techniques. Web site security is possibly today’s most overlooked aspect of securing the enterprise. Hackers are concentrating their efforts on Web sites: 75% of cyber attacks are launched on shopping carts, forms, login pages, dynamic content etc. Common Web hacking techniques, such as SQL injection, cross site scripting, authentication hacking, CRLF injection, Google hacking and directory traversal are discussed in great detail in the Web Site Security Center, with information on how they work, how to find the vulnerabilities, and how to fix vulnerabilities so that valuable enterprise data and applications are no longer at risk.

Symantec announced an updated email security product for business users. Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 is an email gateway software product that offers spam, virus and content filtering. Scheduled to be available in May, the product is the final result of the melding of Brightmail and Symantec technologies into a single, integrated product.

Membership in the OpenDocument Format Alliance has almost quadrupled over the past month. The Alliance, a coalition of organizations from across the world whose goal is to enable governments to have direct management and greater control over their documents, was launched on March 3 with 36 initial members, but that has now grown to 138 members worldwide. The Alliance is trying to promote and advance the use of the ODF (OpenDocument Format), which it says will allow the exchange of documents to take place without regard to the application or platform in which the document was created–both now and in the future.

A new attack aimed at computers infected with the Bagle virus threatens to generate scads of spam email campaigns, and anti-malware experts concede that the threat remains a major headache. Researchers at anti-virus specialist F-Secure, based in Helsinki, Finland, described the attack, dubbed "SpamTool.Win32.Bagle.g," and said it involves a new set of URLs being sent to machines infected with Bagle.

Two years after the introduction of a caller ID-like system for email, Microsoft believes it now has the arguments to sway businesses to adopt the spam-fighting technology. At a Chicago conference on email authentication on Wednesday, Microsoft plans to talk about the success it’s having with Sender ID on its own hosted email services, such as Hotmail. The software giant said it will outline how the verification system is benefiting its email subscribers and those who send messages to them.

Sybase, provider of enterprise infrastructure and mobile software, announced the availability of Sybase PowerBuilder 10.5, the next-generation rapid application development tool. PowerBuilder 10.5 features key functionality enhancements and offers improvements to the DataWindow, an industry leading patented data access, presentation and manipulation tool. These enhancements provide total integration for client/server, distributed and mobile applications.

If reports issued by several well-known antivirus companies are on the money, IT administrators will continue to face new and sophisticated forms of malware that challenge the security industry’s ability to stay ahead of emerging threats. Based on a new study released by software maker McAfee’s Avert Labs group, the technology used to cloak many different forms of malware, especially rootkits, is becoming increasingly complex and harder to detect.

iAnywhere, a subsidiary of Sybase, announced beta availability of SQL Anywhere 10, the next generation of its market-leading database and synchronization product for frontline environments. SQL Anywhere was built from inception to address these unique, data rich environments, which include high-performance server and desktop applications running at remote customer sites, workgroup applications deployed in enterprise departments and remote offices, and mobile applications used by sales people or service technicians. This major release includes more than 200 new features and enhancements designed to help organizations capture, manage and capitalize on this data explosion.

Microsoft is on track to release a Windows XP version of Windows Media Player 11 before the end of June, the company confirmed last week. Microsoft has been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about the XP incarnation. The company briefly demonstrated it at the Consumer Electronics Show in January but has said little since. Microsoft has said the XP version won’t have all the features of its Vista sibling, but the company won’t say which features will be excluded. The company also has yet to offer a public test version of the software.

Users of Hewlett-Packard printers, scanners and cameras may be experiencing some problems after installing Microsoft’s latest round of security patches, released late last week. The problems, which concern a Windows operating system patch numbered MS06-015, can cause some applications to crash, Microsoft warned Saturday. Microsoft believes the problem is primarily affecting consumer users and is having "little to no impact on corporate networks." The problem affects users who have installed software that is included with a number of HP devices, "including but not limited to printers, scanners, and cameras," wrote Microsoft’s Stephen Hui, in a newsgroup posting. Users also have experienced the problem in popular applications like Outlook or Word.