Is Google a looming security industry powerhouse? It does offer some free tools to consumers but that didn't hold off bad publicity last year, when some research outfits took a look at search engine and Twitter traffic and criticized Google for allowing a lot of malware through.

Barracuda Labs did not mince words: "Overall, Google takes the crown for malware distribution--turning up more than twice the amount of malware as Bing, Twitter and Yahoo! combined when searches on popular trending topics were performed. Google presents at 69 percent; Yahoo! at 18 percent; Bing at 12 percent; and Twitter at one percent."

This is somewhat expected given Google's dominance of search traffic. Still, this is an issue for all companies, as they ponder how to structure their browsers and search use policies. You do not want any funky stuff entering employee computers or the network via search.

So is Google planning more in this area? Perhaps. Google last week bought Zynamics, a German firm that specializes in tools for reverse engineering executables. It offers software that is widely used by security research professionals. It's unclear how Google will integrate the company's products or deploy its talented staff, but it does speak to their understanding that it needs to provide enhancements in the security realm.

For more:
- here's an article from Read Write Web

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