Microsoft announced the beta for its next version of Microsoft Security Essentials today. Among the new features are:

The United States continues to be the top country for spam, accounting for 15.2 percent of all global spam, an increase from 13.1 percent in the first quarter of 2010, according to a new report by Sophos.

India trails the U.S., accounting for 7.7 percent of worldwide spam, followed by Brazil (5.5%), the UK (4.6%) and South Korea (4.2%).

Symantec has released its annual MessageLabs Intelligence Special Report, ranking the most spammed U.S. states and territories.

According to the report, Idaho receives the most spam (for the second year in a row), at a rate of 95.2%. The top spammed states are Idaho, Alabama, and South Carolina, with spam rates above 93%. The national average is only 89.3%. Indiana, Tennessee, Illinois, Utah, Washington, New Hampshire and North Carolina are next in line.

Google has announced some new mobile device management options for Google Apps administrators. The options will be available to all Google Apps Premier and Education customers starting this week.

New options include:

Research in Motion (RIM) has unveiled a new security application for BlackBerry called BlackBerry Protect. The product allows users to wirelessly backup, restore, and locate their BlackBerry smartphones.

BlackBerry Protect comes equipped with remote device wipe, remote device lock, a "lost and found" screen, the ability to locate the device on a map, remote activation of the loud ringer.

Even though more companies are regulating social networking sites, employees are finding ways around security blocks, according to a new survey from Trend Micro.

The survey included 1,600 users in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan, found globally social networking at work increased from 19 percent in 2008 to 24 percent in 2010. The highest increase in social networking in the workplace during the last two years was found among users in the U.K., which had a 6 percent increase, and Germany with a 10 percent increase.

The U.S. National Security Agency is launching a program called "Perfect Citizen" aimed at detecting cyberattacks on private companies and government agencies running critical infrastructure such as the electricity grid and nuclear power plants.

Perfect Citizen would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would flag "unusual activity" signaling an impending cyberattack, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Google is extending the suspicious log-in detection feature it recently launched for Gmail to all Google account users, starting this week. If you use any Google product that requires you to log-in with a Google account, this applies to you.

Facebook has revealed a little bit of information about how it looks at spam. The company says it wants to be more transparent about how it handles it.

Along with this transparency is a new message explaining why content might be blocked. It looks something like this:

Yahoo made a significant announcement at its Hadoop Summit today. The company says it’s made significant enhancements to the open source software, accelerating the potential for enterprise-wide adoption by mainstream businesses.

Yesterday a questionable report from SMobile Systems was released talking about Android security and how a fifth of Android apps pose security risks. The methodology behind this report has pretty much been ridiculed throughout the Blogosphere, though quite a few publications covered it. CNET even went so far as to retract the report.

Everyone would do well to show a little caution when browsing the Android Market, according to a new report.  SMobile Systems – which specializes in security issues pertaining to mobile phones and the wireless infrastructure – believes 20 percent of the available applications allow third parties access to info better left unshared.

McAfee has released the results of a study today, finding that nearly half of online teens have shared personal information with strangers. The study looked at this and other areas of concern for parents.

Symantec has released its June 2010 MessageLabs Intelligence Report, which looks at the recent increase in scams containing FIFA World Cup-related messages. The World Cup is being used to target unsuspecting users, and that is expected to increase as the event goes on.

A new study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Experian’s ProtectMyID.com found that people are doing little to protect their personal information on social networks, opening them up to increased vulnerability for ID theft. While about 80% of those surveyed expressed concern about security around social media, over half of them aren’t doing anything about it.

uTest has released the results from a check-in services "Bug Battle" competition, in which over 300 users from about 40 countries reported bugs in popular check-in services Fousquare, Gowalla, and Brightkite. A total of 870 bugs were reported – technical, functional, and GUI bugs in the web and mobile apps of these three services.

Security firm Symantec has announced that during the World Cup it expects social media activity to spike dramatically, and predicts a concurrent rise in fraudulent activity on the web in general, and social networks in particular.

Twitter has introduced a new, secure link-shortening service called t.co. All links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL.

While links might appear something like this: http://t.co/DRo0trj  on SMS, they might appear more based on the domain they are going to on Twitter.com and in third-party apps. So if that link were going to some Amazon page, it might look more like this: amazon.com/Delivering-.

Rumor has it that Google is not using Windows internally anymore, and security companies don’t necessarily find this to be a great solution if security is the concern. More than one has emailed WebProNews with reactions to this story.

Security firm Symantec tells WebProNews that nine out of ten spam emails now contain a URL link in the message, and this month, around 5% of all domains found in spam URLs belonged to genuine websites. The top four of those belong to well-known social networking, blogging, file sharing and user-generated content sites.

In the first quarter of 2010, a USB worm took the top spot for malware globally, according to a new report by McAfee.

Threats on portable storage devices took the lead for the most popular malware. AutoRun related infections held the No.1 and No. 3 spots due to the widespread adoption of removable devices, mainly USB drives.  A variety of password-stealing Trojans rounded out the top five. Those include generic downloaders, unwanted programs and gaming software that collects statistics anonymously. The popularity of these threats were consistent worldwide.