This issue’s DVD comes with the BackTrack 5 R1 [1][2][3] pen test distribution. BackTrack provides a great collection of pen testing and security auditing tools. You can boot into BackTrack Live from the DVD or install BackTrack permanently on your hard disk.

The Wireshark free network sniffer rolls out 1.6 release with advanced features.

Who’s device is it? Just because you bought it doesn’t mean you can look inside. But the Internet has plenty of resources for jailbreakers.

BackTrack, an Ubuntu-based penetration-testing distribution, offers "major improvements" over previous releases, including support for 32- and 64-bit architectures, KDE 4, Gnome, and Fluxbox.

Snort is the de facto standard for open source network intrusion detection. The developer community has kept a fairly low profile for a couple of years, but extensions like Snorby, OpenFPC, and Pulled Pork have given the old hog a new lease on life.

Red Hat announces IBM, Accenture, Alfresco, Cisco, HP and Intel representatives are scheduled to deliver keynotes at the seventh annual Red Hat Summit and JBoss World, May 3-6, 2011 in Boston, Massachusetts.

If you need to monitor very large networks, you need powerful software. OpenNMS offers serious monitoring capabilities in a truly open source package.

Although you give up control of the underlying infrastructure when you use cloud computing, you can still maintain some control over security.