In The News 40 –

Technorati Tags: News,computer,security,fraud,unemployment,infringement,patent,cybercrime

 

Online Fraud Hits Three-Fourths Of SMBs

About 75% of small and medium-sized businesses in the United States experienced online fraud and/or bank account takeover in the past 12 months, according to a study paid for by online banking fraud prevention SaaS provider Guardian Analytics. The Ponemon Institute surveyed 533 SMB owners and executives in the United States and found that banks didn’t detect the fraud in 78% of the cases. The businesses lost money in 60% of the incidents, while banks took losses 37% of the time due to reimbursing affected businesses. The overall online fraud rate remained stable year over year despite the rise of tablet and smartphone access to company bank accounts.

Cisco Pays Commil $64 Million In Second Patent Infringement Trial

Cisco will pay $64 million to Commil USA following the decision by a Texas jury that the telecommunications giant infringed on a wireless transmission technology patent owned b Commil that concerns the use of connections between PBXes, mobile units, and base stations to ensure it steady wireless connection. This is the second trial Commil has brought against Cisco concerning this patent, the original trial awarded $3.7 million to Commil, but the decision was thrown out and a retrial ordered after Commil accused Cisco’s attorney Otis Carroll of making anti-Semitic comments toward Commil co-owner Jonathan David, who is Jewish, while cross-examining him.

Google & BrightSource Energy Partner For Solar Power Project

Google says it is pouring $168 million into a solar power plant project spearheaded by BrightSource Energy. The project, which is called the Ivanpah Soar Energy Generating System, will produce about 392 megawatts of solar energy over the next 25 years. The three power plants will use a large number of mirrors to generate enough electricity to power 140,000 homes. The US Department of Energy loaned $1.38 billion to BrightSource last year to support the project. The power plant project is a $2.2 billion total investment that should be up and running by 2013.

Malware Increases 26% In 2011

A recent report from PandaLabs reveals that the volume of malware increased 26% during the beginning of 2011 compared to the same time period last year and 16% since the end of 2010. According to the report, the average number of new malware detected was 73,190 samples per day, 70% of which were Trojans. The report also showed that some countries have experienced greater malware infection than others – more than half of PC users in China, Thailand, Japan, Latvia, Russia, turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil contracted some type of malware infection during 2010.

Cisco Closes Flip Unit, Lays Off Employees

Cisco announced that it will shut down its Flip video camera division, which sold almost a quarter of all camcorders in the United States last year; as part of the closure, the Flip division’s 550 workers will lose their jobs. The move is part of Cisco’s plan to leave consumer-oriented lines of business. Cisco CEO John Chambers says the company needs to cut expenses and focus on five key areas: switching and services, core routing, IT architectures, collaboration, and data center products. Cisco bough Flip in 2009 for %590 million, in what some saw as an unusual acquisition for the networking giant.

Former HP Exec Accused Of Stealing Trade Secrets

Adrian Jones, former head of enterprise sales for HP’s Asian division, is being sued by HP for stealing trade secrets as he left the company for Oracle. According to the suit, Jones copied privileged documents and emails concerning HP products onto a USB device before exiting the company. He also stands accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate, giving this person a large pay increase, and fudging expense reports relating to visits with the person. This case is similar to troubles HP experienced with ex-CEO Mark Hurd last year, which involved a similar illicit relationship and the misappropriation of trade secrets.

Report Looks At Data Breaches At Energy & Utility Companies

A recent report conducted by the Ponemon Institute reveals that 75% of energy and utility companies have experienced at least one data breach in the past year, and that 69% of them believe they will experience another breach in the next 12 months. Previous studies have shown that critical infrastructure providers are becoming an increasing target for online attacks and that those attacks often are politically motivated. Each breach costs an average of $156,000 to clean up, the report states. More than 71% of respondents say that they believe the management team in their organization does not understand or appreciate the value of IT security, and 67% aren’t using state-of-the-art technology to protect themselves from attacks.

Study: Social Networking A Hot Commodity

Symantec’s latest Internet Security Threat Report finds that cybercriminals have been forced to lower the prices they’re asking for stolen credit cards, to as low as 7 cents a number. Symantec’s researchers claim that the stolen card black market is simply saturated, and lower prices are the only way they can unload the excess inventory. Social network credentials, on the other hand, are still a hot commodity that cybercriminals leverage for distributing malware and spam. Symantec also highlights the potential hazards of shortened URL’s in social networking, which are difficult to verify until they have been clicked. The security firm claims that users clicked 73% of the malware-infected shortened URLs 11 times or more. Of the inspected URLs Symantec observed, 65% were shortened URLs.

More Companies Outsourcing Data Storage

In the name of cutting costs, more businesses (about half now) are interested in outsourcing storage of their sensitive data in other countries. So says a recent Vanson Bourne survey of international IT decision-makers conducted on behalf of McAfee and Science Applications International Corp. Respondents perceived countries such as China, Russia, Israel, and India as being riskier than the United States from a data security perspective. Vanson Bourne points out that companies actually seem to seek out countries with weaker data breach disclosure requirements – about eight in 10 respondents admit that disclosure laws factor into their outsourcing decisions.

IEEE OKs New WiMAX Standard

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) rubber-stamped the latest evolution of WiMAX, IEEE 802.16m, which could support downstream speeds in excess of 300 Mbps. The standard, also known as WirelessMAN-Advanced or WiMAX-2, is seeing stiff competition from LTE (Long-Term Evolution), which is a similar technology but has the backing of a different standards body. Features that help the new revision outstrip its predecessor include MIMO (multiple-in, multiple-out) technology that uses multiple antennas to send and receive simultaneous data streams.

Satyam To Settle US Fraud Charges

To settle financial fraud charges, Satyam Computer Services will pay a $10 million penalty to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2009, company founder B. Ramalinga Raju admitted to inflating company earning statements, and the Indian government took over the company. Criminal charges have also been filed against Raju and several other former company executives. According to the SEC complaint, former Satyam managers created more than 6,000 phony invoices to be used in the company’s general ledger and financial statements and also created bogus bank statements to reflect payment of the sham invoices. In addition to paying the penalty, the company agreed to train employees and improve internal audit functions.

GAO: H-1B Visas Benefiting Few, Hurting US Workers

The controversial H-1B visa program for the importation of skilled foreign workers is plagued with confusion, disproportionate benefits, toothless oversight, and weakened protection for US workers. So says the Government Accountability Office after researching information from the past decade. Less than 1% of businesses account for nearly 30% of H-1B workers. This tiny group consists mainly of staffing companies, from which businesses hire contract workers, often without triggering a legal obligation to abide by the H-1B program’s domestic worker protection rules such as prevailing wage requirements. Moreover, oversight is diffused among four agencies.

Two Charged With Insider Trading

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two men with using insider knowledge of several high-profile mergers to accrue illegal profits over the past five years. Lawyer Matthew Kluger and his stock trader cohort Garrett Bauer, as well as an unnamed third person who acted as a go-between for the defendants, allegedly used knowledge Kluger gained from his position at legal advisory firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to make trades ahead of almost a dozen high-profile mergers, including Sun/Oracle, McAfee/Intel, and 3Com/HP. The two netted about $32 million in profits from their trades.

 

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The Cloud Way Of Life

Technorati Tags: Review,Cloud Computing,Google,Chrome,OS,computer

 

It isn’t often that I recommend a reading that I came across, however, the following article by David Weinberger in KM World Magazine, April 2011, is very noteworthy. I present the article verbatim.

First a little bit more about Mr. Weinberger. David Weinberger is a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman center for Internet & Society, email self@evident.com. His blog is http://www.johotheblog.com and his latest book is Everything is Miscellaneous (www.eimisc.com ).

 

“I thought I loved the Cloud. I thought I was ready for the Cloud. I thought I could handle the Cloud. Then I got a Google notebook. And now I’m not so sure.

First, hats off to Google for taking the bold marketing step of sending out laptops to people who asked for them and people who did not. Way to get the conversation going, Google, even if it doesn’t always go your way. (No, I’m not being sarcastic.)

I hadn’t applied for a Google CR-48 notebook, but I thought one might be on the way when a person at Google Docs with whom I’d spent a morning asked me for my snail address. I spent the next few weeks sitting on our front porch, waiting for a Google-shaped box to arrive. (Disclosure: I’ve never been paid by Google for anything. And I’m keeping the notebook.)

When the Google notebook at last arrived, I immediately unpacked it, and it went through an extremely simple start-up routine. I was surfing the Web within minutes. Boot-up time is terrific, and I’m happy to report that for once a laptop actually goes to sleep and wakes up instantaneously – and so far without crashing – when you close and open the lid. What a breakthrough! (Now I am being sardonic).

Google sent out the notebooks so we could see an early version of its Chrome operating system in action. The strengths and weaknesses of the hardware are therefore irrelevant. Nevertheless, it’s hard to write about my experience of the Chrome OS without some notes about the hardware package it came wrapped in. So: The notebook’s battery life is excellent even when continuously connected to Wi-Fi. It connects easily to your local Wi-Fi source. Web apps run well. It’s also hard to avoid noting that the trackpad is just about unusable, and the print on the keyboard is so faint that it is illegible (at least to my old eyes) without light directly on it.

But it’s as a proof of concept of Chrome OS that it really lost me. The main concept it proved to me is that I’m not ready to give up client processing and local storage.

In around 1995, when I worked at Open Text, the CEO then (and now executive chairman), Tom Jenkins, said that Netscape was aiming at being the new desktop. Tom was ahead of his time, but I don’t think even he meant that Netscape was aiming at literally replacing the Windows or Mac desktop, as apposed to becoming a platform on which Web apps could run. But the Chrome OS is the Chrome Web browser with no desktop underneath. None at all. Close the browser and you’ve logged out of the computer. It makes you realize just how much you like having a desktop. Or, for those of us who basically never see our desktops because of all the windows we keep open, it makes you realize how much you like having a file system you can browse.

Chrome expects you to do everything on the Web. Everything. Want to do some word processing? Go to Google Docs, or Zoho, or whatever you prefer. Want to open a document that you worked on yesterday? You’d better hope that you stored it at the Web site whose application you’re using. Want to get a spreadsheet you created in 1996? Did you remember to upload it to your online spreadsheet application? Want to listen to music? Did you remember to move it into the Cloud?

Few of us are at the point where we’re willing to live entirely in the Cloud. For one thing, the applications we’ve grown to rely on generally don’t have functional Cloud-based equivalents. Do you use PowerPoint or Keynote? Try the Google Docs equivalent and tell me how much you love it. Do you use Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Pages or Scrivener? The Google Docs equivalent is a step back to the word processor you were using 15 years ago, aside from its excellent simultaneous editing feature (which is useful twice a year and mainly as a party novelty).

That assumes, of course, that there’s a Wi-Fi source nearby. Without a Wi-Fi connection, the CR-48 is not a bundle of joy. As a result, I use it only at home where I can rely on Wi-Fi being on. A laptop that you dare not take out of the house: really not what I’m looking for.

Someday there will be ubiquitous Wi-Fi. Someday Web Apps will be as fully developed as our local apps, and they’ll have the advantage of being connected to networked collaborators. But we’re a long way from that day. Until then, what I want is a snappy browser able to run sophisticated Web apps, on top of a competent desktop and file system. Especially with the recent addition of the ability to run processes in the background, that’s exactly what we have with the Chrome the Browser. The Chrome OS is for a time that does not yet exist. If Google wants to provide a free, Web-savvy OS, given that we still live between earth and heaven (um, local and Cloud), a bundle of Linux plus an enhanced Chrome browser seems like a more practical way to go.”

I can only say that I completely agree with Mr. Weinberger. Then again, I’m kind of old fashioned too.

 

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Internet Espionage a Great Equalizer

Technorati Tags: Security,hacking,attacks,cybercrime

 

Even the Dalai Lama isn’t safe from hacking, according to a new report. The report, “Shadows in the Cloud,” documents Internet espionage operations that targeted and compromised computer systems in India and the offices of the Dalai Lama, among other instances. Cyber threats are now the great equalizer around the world.

“Countries no longer have to spend billions of dollars to build globe-spanning satellites to pursue high-level intelligence gathering when they can do so via the Web,” the report’s authors write.

Most of this clandestine activity is aimed at the world’s two fastest growing economies in China and India, according to the report. In the case of the Dalai Lama, hackers extracted an entire year’s worth of e-mail messages to and from the spiritual leader.

The joint report by the Information Warfare Monitor and Shadowserver Foundation monitored attacks originating from the People’s Republic of China, particularly Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan province. However, the report stops short of saying that these attacks are government sanctioned or have the official mandate of any government.

The report’s release comes at a pivotal time. Google Inc., recently stopped censoring its Google.cn portal for the Chinese government after human rights advocates e-mail accounts were tapped by hackers traced to China. Last week, Google turned it attention to Vietnam, where it says attackers have spread malware through Vietnamese language keyboard software, using that tactic to curtail political dissent.

Andres Storms, director of security at security software firm nCircle, suggested that political spying over the Internet is now widespread. “The only surprise [from the report] is the expectation that there’s any major world power that isn’t engaged in some form of cyber-monitoring of both friendly and adversarial relationships,” Storms said. “The reality is that every country is vulnerable to cyber espionage and cyber attack.

 

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