In some ways, the computer business is a bit like show business. There are stars that become household names -- names to conjure with. But for every one of them, there are dozens of workaday actors who may deliver perfectly credible performances but remain largely anonymous. Something similar goes o...

Hacker Safe: The Security of Online Commerce

April 29, 2004

In mid-March, BJ's Wholesale Club announced it was investigating a security breach that involved theft of credit card information from its computer network. Company officials ordered an exhaustive review of the retail outlet's state-of-the-industry technology systems with a leading computer security...

Microsoft, Proprietary Code and the Shared Source Initiative

April 27, 2004

In a move to build better relationships with certain classes of customer, Microsoft in 2001 began allowing them to look at portions of Windows source code. Several programs were set up, serving selected enterprises, "most valuable professionals," OEMs, system integrators, academics and several other...

Twilight of Barcodes and the Dawn of RFID

April 17, 2004

Barcodes, those familiar sets of lines on items from DVDs to refrigerators, eventually may go the way of the typewriter, the black-and-white television and the dodo. Radio Frequency Identification technology promises to replace bar coding and make it easier for suppliers, distributors and retailers ...

Can Software Kill You?

April 13, 2004

Software can kill you. Don't think so? Talk to the family members of 21 deceased patients treated at the National Cancer Institute in Panama in November 2000. The cancer patients died after being overdosed by a Cobalt-60 radiotherapy machine. The technicians who entered patient and medication data i...

Ensuring Quality of Service on VoIP Networks

April 9, 2004

Like most countries boasting modern telecommunications systems, Australia has been implementing Voice over IP (VoIP) services. After a slow start, what began as a mild flirtation is now becoming an embrace, although use of VoIP technology is still in relatively early stages compared with market expe...

Eliminating Downtime: The Continuous-Backup Revolution

April 8, 2004

Most businesses secure their information infrastructure by regularly backing it up onto tape. Some have gone further, enhancing their backup strategy with expensive disk arrays and mirroring. If an earthquake, flood, blackout or hard-disk failure should catch them by surprise, these backups would en...

Global Piracy: Illegal Software Markets Endure

April 6, 2004

Despite aggressive tactics by U.S. agencies to crack down on illegal software warehouses, distribution of illegal software continues to rival legitimate software retail sales. Studies by industry watchdogs show that while worldwide software piracy has declined steadily from a rate of 50 percent to a...

The Myth of the Secure Operating System

April 3, 2004

The old adage about there being "safety in numbers" no longer applies, at least not in the world of IT security. Microsoft platforms are not only the most widespread, but also the most attacked. About that much, most -- but not all -- commentators agree. The mi2g Intelligence Unit issued three bulle...

Instant Messaging Opens New Security Holes

March 31, 2004

Instant messaging has become the latest employee productivity tool. A customer-service representative can use it to answer a customer inquiry, whereas a salesperson can inform a busy vice president about a new account. In fact, research firm Gartner estimates 70 percent of corporate employees rely o...

IT Security and Software Development

March 26, 2004

Let's do some arithmetic. Multiply the number of different hardware platforms in current use by the number of operating systems that have a reasonably large user base. Subtract the systems that simply won't work together. Multiply the result by the number of applications, servers and databases used ...

Global Extortion: Online Gambling and Organized Hacking

March 23, 2004

A new trend in extorting money from sports and gambling Web sites isn't going away like security experts had predicted. Online gambling Web sites began receiving e-mail threats in October of last year. The messages contained demands for money to prevent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks t...

3G Networks Ready To Take Hold

March 20, 2004

Faster, more flexible, less expensive and more functional has been the telecommunications industry's mantra. As soon as one networking technology takes hold, vendors begin pushing another that promises to deliver more functionality, and such a scenario is now unfolding with wireless wide area networ...

Passwords Fail the Security Test

March 19, 2004

Passwords are the first line of defense in almost every company's security scheme. But sometimes they are the weakest link because they can be easily guessed, stolen or otherwise compromised. If a firm wants to keep its information secure, then it needs to put additional security checks in place. Pa...

MyDoom: A Wrap-Up on the World's Most Vicious Worm

March 9, 2004

The family of MyDoom e-mail worms remains an active threat because of compromised computer systems and unprotected personal computers even though the virus was programmed to shut down last month. As a result of the prevalent infections, the MyDoom creators still can mobilize a vast network of comput...

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