Find out what’s being done to address security risks that pertain to noncommercial flights, such as corporate jets and crop dusters.

NRA-backed state laws that force companies to allow guns in their parking lots

The New York State Unified Court System has recommended more than 40 measures to improve court security.

The National Fire Protection Association has issued guidelines for security system installations.

International body charged with containing the spread of nuclear bomb technology has made progress

Michigan Supreme Court has ruled that an employee hired to work in a Ford Motor Company cafeteria

Schools are not doing enough to protect students from sex crimes or to ensure that they are accurately reported when they occur.

The FTC has released Effectiveness and Enforcement of the CAN-SPAM Act, which concludes that the law has been effective in slowing down spam.

This PricewaterhouseCoopers guidebook helps companies to think about their security strategies.

Are fears over identity theft exaggerated? An ID Analytics study says yes.

The California Supreme Court has ruled that employees need not complain to their companies about discrimination in order to have the right to later sue them for retaliation.

A paper entitled An Experimental Evaluation to Determine if Port Scans are Precursors to an Attack describes the results of an experimental approach to determine the correlation between port scans and attacks.

The GAO found that the role of the portfolio managers was never finalized and that the S&T directorate does not require documentation of how determinations are made about where research and development projects and funds are directed. In addition, it was discovered that the portfolio managers were not required to attend ethics training specific to their jobs

Over one-quarter of states do not have sufficient bioterrorism laboratory response capabilities,” says the third annual study of the U.S. public health and emergency response capabilities by the Trust for America’s Health. The report brings to light several deficiencies in the public health sector and evaluates states’ abilities to respond to and mitigate the effects of a natural disaster or terrorist incident. @ The full report is available via SM Online.

An Illinois appellate court has ruled that a tenant who was raped outside her apartment may sue her landlord for inadequate security.

The House Homeland Security Committee has approved a bill (H.R. 3197) that would regulate the purchase of ammonium nitrate. The provision must now be taken up by the House of Representatives.

A bill (S. 2052) introduced by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) would provide a security-related tax credit for businesses that sell agricultural chemicals or manufacture, formulate, or distribute certain pesticides. The tax credit would be for 30 percent of the costs for protecting those chemicals and would expire in 2010. S. 2052 has three cosponsors and has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee.

In South Carolina, employees become ineligible for unemployment benefits if fired for failing a drug test. A new state law (formerly A.B. 50) requires an employer to prove that it followed certain procedures before firing an employee for failing a drug test. If the company cannot offer such proof, the employee will not be disqualified from receiving unemployment benefits.

A new Wyoming law (formerly S.B. 129) makes it a felony to intentionally and surreptitiously record images of people in an enclosed area where they have an expectation of privacy, such as a bathroom, shower, or dressing room.

A new appellate case strengthens the trend of preemptively suing to break a noncompete agreement. William Manuel worked for an Ohio company. He resigned, promising not to work for a competitor, but he had already accepted such a job in Georgia. He then filed a preemptive lawsuit in Georgia, which has laws more favorable to employees in such cases. The Georgia court ruled that the noncompete agreement was unenforceable. A federal appeals court ruled that the Georgia court's decision would stand because the first lawsuit filed in such a case establishes the venue. (Manuel v. Convergys Corporation, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, No. 04-16032, 2005)

Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is responsible for analyzing the act’s effectiveness and making recommendations for changes, the act has given the FTC, the Department of Justice, and Internet service providers (ISPs) the ammunition to bring dozens of actions against alleged spammers; many of these legal actions are still in progress, but many others have already resulted in settlements.

Four widely publicized data breaches resulted in the compromise of around half a million customer names and Social Security numbers. How many of those consumers became victims of identity theft? Almost none—0.098 percent, or less than one in 1,000.

More than half the retailers that collect information from consumers for promotions and marketing campaigns have assigned responsibility for protecting consumer-specific data to a security-program coordinator

Automated port scans, which look for open ports that might be candidates for exploitation, are sometimes likened to a thief rattling doorknobs, looking for one that’s unlocked.

Now that cell phones have morphed into miniature computers, they contain more information than ever before. In addition to phone numbers and a record of calls made and received, phones can now contain e-mail or text messages, photos, and a host of other data that could be of value when investigating a crime.