The European Commission is intent on boosting data security and raising awareness around the protection of personal information. Speaking at the Microsoft Innovation Day in Brussels yesterday, vice president of the European Commission, Franco Frattini, said: "We must dramatically improve people's awareness of these crimes. Better data protection would also have a positive impact on consumer trust in cyberspace."

UK web-hosting company Fasthosts has reset customer passwords after a hacker breached one of its servers.

The loss by HM Revenue & Customs of 25 million child benefit claimant records has understandably sparked a host of reactions from security and legal experts. Ovum principal analyst Graham Titterington encapsulated the scale of the event by saying: "This announcement is breathtaking because of the scale of the loss but not because it is a unique event. Indeed, it is the third major data leakage from HMRC in just three months."

The government has agreed to data security spot checks across all departments by the Information Commissioner following the loss of 25 million records of child benefit recipients by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). Prime Minister Gordon Brown said all government departments and agencies will also have their procedures for the storage and use of data checked by security experts.

The security of domain name system (DNS) continues to be an issue for network administrators, despite the availability of more secure DNS servers such as BIND 9, according to a survey by network appliance company, Infoblox.

An alleged Russian malware hosting gang has abruptly disappeared, according to internet security company Trend Micro. The Russian Business Network (RBN), which was allegedly heavily involved in hosting malware packing kits - development suites for malware - suddenly dropped off the internet last week, said the security company.

C-level employees of publicly listed companies are being targeted by cyber criminals using malware-infected RTF (Rich Text File) documents disguised as recruitment letters. Security vendor MesssageLabs reported that 1,100 emails containing malware-infected RTF attachments have been recorded over a 16-hour period this month. Four separate waves appeared between 13 and 14 September, the company said.

Spending on security software across Europe will top €2.4bn this year, with antivirus continuing to form the largest slice of the pie. Antivirus will account for more than 50 per cent of the total security software revenue market in 2007 according to the calculations by analyst Gartner.

Businesses are failing to secure their wi-fi and VoIP networks adequately, leaving themselves open to growing security threats. IT body the National Computing Centre (NCC) is warning that although organisations are addressing IT security generally, through virus protection, spam blocking and firewalls, newer technologies are being neglected.

Social networking sites could be exposing consumers and businesses to increased security risk, it has been claimed. According to credit information provider Equifax, fraudsters could make off with users' personal information in order to commit ID theft - and the company is urging web users to limit the amount of info they post online.