Daily News Archive

Please note that The Daily News is publishing (hopefully) twice a week for the foreseeable future due to time constraints.

Wednesday, September 6th

"If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.” – Kurt Lewin

 

The Picks of the Day

Warning on free O'Hare Wi-Fi connections

“About 90 percent of the free wireless broadband connections available at O'Hare International Airport are not true Wi-Fi hotspots and some could be traps laid by fraudsters, a computer security firm asserts.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0609040018sep04,1,21615.story?track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true

[This is likely the case at many airports.]

 

Group will unveil mobile security open specs

“The company purchased 10 mobile devices from eBay and salvaged data, including personal banking and tax information, corporate client records, product road maps, computer passwords, and contact address books, the company said in a statement.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20060904/tc_infoworld/81443_1

[Trust recovered 27,000 pages of data off the 10 phones.  So, what all is on your organization’s phones?]

 

CERT Secure Coding Standards

“The Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) CERT® Program has deployed a secure coding Web site at www.securecoding.cert.org to cooperate with the software development community in codifying a practical and effective set of secure coding practices for popular programming languages. These coding practices can then be used by software developers to eliminate vulnerabilities before software is operationally deployed.  The purpose of this project is that the practices can be used by developers for professional development and as the basis for organizational coding standards supporting the quality of their products.”

https://www.securecoding.cert.org/confluence/display/seccode/CERT+Secure+Coding+Standards

 

U.S. Travelers Face New Passport Rules

“Congress and the Department of Homeland Security are tightening border procedures for both U.S. citizens and foreign travelers entering the U.S. By Jan. 8, passports will be required for most everyone entering the U.S. from the Caribbean, Canada and Mexico through airports and seaports, instead of just a birth certificate and driver's license. Land borders will adopt the same requirement Jan. 1, 2008.”

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115741283686853245-OzSo9vuV6ltc1b55ibuJGTciqQs_20061004.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

 

IT Process Improvement

IT Service Management Achieves 'Compliance by Default'

“The ReymannGroup today released a survey that shows companies can strategically align IT service management best practices to enable business growth and cost-effective compliance.  ReymannGroup in collaboration with Whitlock Infrastructure Solutions surveyed over 186 executives across multiple industries. The companies surveyed were largely situated in the Mid-Atlantic Region.”

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060830/phw006.html?.v=70

 

Vendors' ITIL skills lagging, say IT managers

“Some of the industry's biggest technology suppliers risk missing out on outsourcing contracts if they cannot lift their lagging service management standards, according to a group of IT managers.”

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Vendors_ITIL_skills_lagging_say_IT_managers/0,39023166,39268152,00.htm?feed=rss

 

Legal and Regulatory Compliance

Lawyers elude penalties

“Four years after regulators launched a task force to stamp out business corruption, numerous chief executives are on their way to prison, two of the nation’s biggest accounting firms are defunct or on probation, and investment banks have shelled out billions of dollars in settlements.  But lawyers serving fraud-ridden companies have emerged relatively unscathed.”

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/business/15437291.htm?source=rss&channel=journalgazette_business

 

Enterprises face new e-discovery rules

“Demand for data storage and retrieval products will increase thanks to new rules governing how digital documents are gathered for civil cases in U.S. federal courts.  Among other things, the amended Federal Rules for Civil Procedures (FRCP) delineate how enterprises must respond when compelled to produce documents in a lawsuit. They also let judges decide whether a records request puts an undue financial burden on an enterprise.”

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/09/01/HNediscoveryrules_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/09/01/HNediscoveryrules_1.html

 

Security and Risk Management

Virus levels soar in August

“Antivirus firm SoftScan said this week that spam now accounts for 87.72 per cent of all email, and that virus levels have doubled over the past month.”

http://www.infomaticsonline.co.uk/vnunet/news/2163466/phishing-emails-rise

 

New U.S. security rules rile airlines, air crews

“Canada's airlines want their crews to be exempted from proposed U.S. rules that would force them to go through high-tech fingerprint screening, an extra layer of airport security that the carriers fear will delay flights.”

http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/story/GAM.20060904.RPILOTS04/GIStory/

 

After 9/11, Businesses Try to Prepare

“At Akamai Technologies Inc., a framed photo of a smiling young brown-haired man serves as a daily reminder of terrorism's toll, and the importance of preparing for the unexpected -- a growing need at a company responsible for shepherding as much as one-fifth of the world's Internet traffic.”

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060903/sept_11_business_preparedness.html?.v=1

 

Build Security In Home

“BSI content is based on the principle that software security is fundamentally a software engineering problem and must be addressed in a systematic way throughout the software development life cycle. BSI contains and links to a broad range of information about best practices, tools, guidelines, rules, principles, and other knowledge to help organizations build secure and reliable software”

https://buildsecurityin.us-cert.gov/daisy/bsi/home.html

 

Insider Risk Management Guide

"The threat posed by authorized personnel is well documented by research and court cases. According to ACFE, U.S. organizations loose an estimated $652 billion to fraud annually. Unfortunately, insider threat is not limited to fraud. There is also sabotage, negligence, human error and exploitation by outsiders to consider. If you have not taken a hard look at insider threat controls in your organization, now is the time."

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/general/0,295582,sid14_gci1213354,00.html

 

Insider Threat Group - Yahoo Groups
The insider threat group provides a forum to discuss resources and techniques to mitigate the threat posed by authorized personnel. Those interested in learning more about insider threat will benefit benefit from the exchange of tips and the opportunity to ask questions. The group is moderated to keep on topic.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/insider-threat

 

Human Error / Safety

Critics say agency safety rules weakened

“Months before new health and safety rules are to take effect for more than 100,000 workers at Department of Energy sites across the nation, the DOE is dismantling the office that's in charge of implementing them.”

http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060903/NEWS/609030351

 

Series of small human errors built toward Ky. plane crash

“What is known is that a string of mistakes preceded the deadly crash of Comair Flight 5191, but what is less clear is which one was the turning point.”

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1157283128115280.xml&coll=2

 

Outsourcing / Globalization / International

RP contact centers still producing most IT jobs--CICT exec

“The contact center industry remains the segment of the outsourcing industry in the Philippines that creates the most jobs, a government official said on Monday.”

http://technology.inq7.net/infotech/infotech/view_article.php?article_id=18937

 

TeleTech CEO: English in countryside takes the cake

“Like a true blue foreigner, Kenneth ‘Ken’ Tuchman is scouring the entire country in search for the best possible sites. But what the American is looking for is not the typical tourist destinations but locations where he can expand his company’s call center operations.”

http://www.mb.com.ph/INFO2006090573407.html

 

Chinese broadband to be biggest in the world by 2007

“The Chinese broadband market will become the biggest in the world by 2007, according to analyst Ovum.  The country will overtake the US and then accelerate to 139 million subscribers by 2010, the research firm says.”

http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2163472/china-broadband-top-world

 

China's resources

“China is nothing if not tenacious in its conviction that it can buck the trend in world commodity markets. In spite of its recent failure to force down the contract price of iron ore in hard-fought annual negotiations with producers, Beijing now plans to establish state-run negotiating groups in an attempt to dictate the prices it pays for oil, alumina and copper. This latest scheme, however, is unlikely to succeed any better than its earlier effort.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ft/20060904/bs_ft/fto090420060701006003

 

Globalization harbors inflationary risks: Bank of France study

“The Bank of France has warned that globalization could aggravate inflationary pressures that would justify greater vigilance on monetary policies.  A bank study noted that while globalization had spurred disinflation over the past 15 years, the trend is now reversing itself.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060904/bs_afp/franceinflationglobalisationbank_060904142746

 

Economics / Business / Misc.

'On Classical Economics' a good read for everyone

“The book provides some fresh insights into the major figures of the classical period — an era roughly from 1776 to 1890 — that should appeal to professional economists. At the same time, Sowell’s prose is so lucid that this book should prove illuminating and interesting to noneconomists as well, helping to popularize the field of economic thought.”

http://citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200660902055

 

The productivity watch

“Why does productivity matter? It measures an economy's ability to do more with the same amount of labor and is the best indicator of how fast it can grow without spurring inflation.”

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/09/04/8384709/index.htm

 

How Google can make - or break - your company

“Smart entrepreneurs are taking a similar approach to Google, which can decimate their sales through a whim of search-engine coding, or deliver a flood of new customers and ad revenue. How Google affects your company depends on how quickly you accept its power and how cleverly you accommodate it.”

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2006/09/01/8384907/index.htm

 

What pipeline problem?

“Lost in the fallout from BP's shut-down at Prudhoe Bay is the fact that the system is getting better, and oil supplies are growing, says Fortune's Jon Birger.”

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/09/04/8384706/index.htm

 

How to Eliminate America's Addiction to Oil

“Can America's addiction to oil be eliminated? Several innovative renewable energy technologies and greater implementation of energy efficiency can eliminate our reliance on foreign oil. Hydrogen and fuel cells represent one of the most promising and innovative technologies of our era to meet our future energy needs.”

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1324

[This is an interesting article.  The author is Darshan Goswami, Chief, Load Forecasting and Renewable Energy, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.]

 

Bombers ... In Spaaaaace!

“The U.S. Military Space Plane -- or MSP -- has been high on the Pentagon's wish list since at least 2003, when an Air Force planning document revealed the military's desire for a quick-launch space plane that could drop a bomb anywhere on the globe within two hours, without the need of forward bases.”

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71708-0.html?tw=rss.technology