Last month, McAfee Cybercrime Strategist Pamela Warren sat down with a senior executive at a Sydney bank to discuss the risks to the corporate network from workers using social networking. After going over the trade-offs associated with allowing insiders to use social networks at work, his team confirmed that they would use data leak prevention technology to monitor the network traffic--balancing the desire to benefit from such new technologies while ensuring company secrets remain protected.

Warren had a similar meeting with a U.S. government agency last week to discuss strategies for dealing with public employees using Web apps at work and mobile devices, which can introduce viruses and other security problems into a corporate network. And she's been preparing for the launch early next year of McAfee's Cybercrime Response Unit, a site where consumers can go when they think they've been victimized by online scams.

She's increasingly focusing on protecting Internet users because malware attacks are up now that economic times are tough. Online scammers have been going into overdrive with phishing and other online schemes aimed at people confused about the banking consolidation or who are desperate because of a layoff or foreclosure.