ReadWriteEnterprise

A spokesperson for European Commission Vice President Joaquin Almunia confirmed to ReadWriteWeb this afternoon from Brussels that the Commission has yet to come to a decision over whether to issue a Statement of Objections to Google, specifically with respect to an official investigation into whether the company weights search results - especially searches for commercial products - against certain sites, including online retailers.

The confirmation comes after a Bloomberg News report this morning appeared to indicate the EC had yet to reach a decision about an investigation concerning whether Google makes arbitrary choices with regard to which sites receive higher-ordered results in Google News. As Comm. Almunia's spokesperson tells RWW, his statement was actually in response to something else entirely: specifically, a question submitted by another commissioner into whether, over a two-year period, the Commission has obtained evidence showing Google actively demotes specific retailers.

NSS Labs has released its latest report: Endpoint Protection Product Group Test Report: Host Intrusion Prevention. As in its recent socially engineered malware protection test, AVG and Panda received "caution" ratings from NSS for their respective enterprise endpoint protection products. Enterprise products from Norman and NSS president Rick Moy's former employer ESET also received "caution" ratings. Norman's anti-malware appliance, however, was recently certified by NSS.

The study examined security products' ability to prevent client-side exploits - attacks that take advantage of vulnerabilities in software such as Adobe Reader or Web browsers. Operation Aurora, which hit Google and many other major companies late last year, is an example of such an exploit.

This week NSS Labs released their Q2 2010 Corporate Endpoint Protection Products report. NSS has only publicly announced the two products it specifically recommends against: Panda's Internet Security 2010 (Enterprise) and AVG's Internet Security Business Edition 9. However, it takes only a quick look at Trend Micro's web site to guess how NSS rated Office Scan (hint: very well). Some vendors have protested NSS's ratings in the past, but like it or not NSS is changing the way security testing is conducted.