SPYROS FIDAS

McAfee released the annual Virtual Criminology Report.

Virtual Criminology Report is a study on current facts and potential trends for Computer Crime. Some interesting parts of the paper follow.

“Three Key Findings Emerged

Firstly, cybercrime isn’t yet enough of a priority for governments around the world to allow the fight against it to make real headway worldwide. Added to that, the physical threat of terrorism and economic collapse is diverting political attention elsewhere. In contrast, cybercriminals are sharpening their focus. Recession is fertile ground for criminal activity as fraudsters clamour to capitalise on rising use of the Internet and the climate of fear and anxiety. Are we in danger of irrevocably damaging consumer trust and, in effect, limiting the chances of economic recovery?

Secondly, cross border law enforcement remains a long-standing hurdle to fighting cybercrime. Local issues mean laws are difficult to enforce transnational. Cybercriminals will therefore always retain the edge unless serious resources are allocated to international efforts.

Thirdly, law enforcement at every level remains ad hoc and ill-equipped to cope. While there has been progress, there is still a significant lack of training and understanding in digital forensics and evidence collection as well as in the law courts around the world. The cyber kingpins remain at large while the minor mules are caught and brought to rights. Some governments are guilty of protecting their in-country offenders. The findings suggest there is an ever greater need to harmonise priorities and coordinate police forces across physical boundaries. The report concludes with a look at suggested steps at both the local and international level to make the fight against cybercrime more effective.”

“Experts recommend that the following steps be considered and implemented at both a local and international level:

1. Significantly more training and resourcing for cyber cops, prosecutors and judges, alongside the mainstreaming of cyber evidence gathering and prosecution.

2. Legal or co-regulatory incentives for Internet Service Providers to follow best practice in network design and operation – Incentivising ISPs in turn to work both with other service providers and their customers to improve levels of security. ISPs should also be encouraged to work closer with police as the gatekeepers of the Internet.

3. Security breach disclosure requirements – We cannot expect a market in secure products and services to develop without the information needed to allow customers to quantify security levels. The new EU rules are a start but need widening beyond the telecoms sector and scrutinised to make sure they are not implemented in a token way, and to avoid customer ‘security fatigue.’

4. In the US, there are stopgap measures on a state level for data breach notification. Dozens of states have passed different laws. A simple, straightforward data breach notification standard is needed to help companies respond uniformly and seamlessly, and to ensure citizens get the widest level of protection, regardless of which state they are from. In addition, enterprises that hold sensitive personal information should meet a common security standard so the possibility of a breach is reduced.

5. Legal responsibility for both businesses and government agencies when customers suffer Internet-related security losses, except in cases of gross negligence by customers. Banks in particular must be given strong legal and commercial incentives to introduce more secure technology and better fraud detection systems, or they will inevitably cut margins on security as they struggle to ride out the credit crunch and economic downturn. Clear bank liability would reward banks that are taking security seriously, greatly reduce the problems customers have faced, and correspondingly increase online trust and convenience – vital for e-commerce and e-government to flourish in future.

6. Continued consumer education through focused programmes. However, systems must be designed to make it difficult for users to make security mistakes – we cannot expect the average Internet user to become a security expert. Media literacy programmes for informed consumer choice are not enough to ensure users prioritise security over convenience or short term goals.

7. Limited liability for software vendors when they are not following best security practice in their system design and operation. We cannot stop the flood of malware until operating systems and key applications, especially browsers and email clients, are significantly more secure.

8. The use of government procurement power to demand significantly higher standards of security in software and services – Incentivising security enhancements that will spill over to private users. Government information assurance agencies should follow the example of the US National Security Agency in working with software companies to significantly increase software security levels.”

The study can be downloaded at McAfee Website

More and more solutions are provided over the Internet to cover all aspects of corporate needs. The list of vendors and services is huge and is growing rapidly every day. A very good site that presents these solutions is Go2web20.net. It is surprising that most of the office day tasks are provided for a low monthly per user fee. In addition, advanced collaboration services are also offered, like Project Management tools, Time Tracking, and so on.

A few sites that draw attention are:

Project Office.net - PM tracking

LiteAccounting (ex meiraware) – Invoicing and track payment

BlueTie – Business Class Email Service

Woosabi – CRM for Small business

File123 – Web file Storage

Vizu – Online Surveys and polls

Xero – Online business Accounting Software

The list and the services are endless; some of them are in beta and offered for free but most of the sites offer corporate premium level services.

The biggest US technology companies may have a surfeit of cash but leading industry executives have dashed hopes that they will use those resources to return money to shareholders or step up acquisitions in the downturn.

Instead, they are treating the financial crisis, which has left companies in many other industries starved of resources as the credit markets dry up, as vindication for a highly conservative financial stance that brought criticism in better times.

It’s not burning a hole in our pocket, it’s fine for it to just sit there,” said Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, which has amassed $16bn of cash.

“You’ll continue to see us long on cash,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, which has nearly $21bn. “In this environment, most people would tell you cash is king. Most people tend to guard cash pretty tightly, value having cash, because you never know when you might need some.”

The tech industry’s strong cash position has set it apart and left the biggest players with considerable financial flexibility. While companies including Microsoft and Cisco Systems have held large amounts of cash since before the tech bust early this decade, others such as Apple and Google have used the success of recent years to join the new super-rich elite.

Yet the experience of previous downturns and fear that they could need deep reserves to draw on in fast-moving technology markets has made them cautious to spend. Many in Silicon Valley still point to earlier near-failures, with Intel forced to take an investment from IBM in the early 1980s, and Steve Jobs famously accepting a $150m cash infusion from Microsoft soon after returning to head Apple in 1997.

Intel now has a rule-of-thumb approach of keeping enough cash on hand to fund one year of research and development and the capital needed to develop the next generation of chip technology, said Robert Burgelman, a professor at Stanford business school.

“Intel is in this relentless drive to make these massive investments that probably only Samsung can compete with,” he said. “The Japanese and the Europeans, they all blinked.”

Yet the cash cushions of other tech companies in less capital-intensive parts of the business now far exceed such requirements. Despite spending only about $2bn a year on R&D and capital investment, Apple’s $26bn in cash has left it with the biggest cash pile in the tech world – a big contrast to the last downturn, which it started with less than $4bn. The cash now accounts for about a third of its market value.

Since the last tech bust, many other tech companies have responded to pressure from shareholders to partially reduce cash balances by buying back shares and making smaller acquisitions.

Yet keeping a big cushion on hand also leaves the company with “a range of options” for the future, such as making acquisitions and investing its business, and also sends a strong message to customers about a company’s staying power, said Frank Calderoni, chief financial officer of Cisco, which has net cash of $20bn.

While saying the cash will help them get more value from their acquisitions, however, most tech executives say they are likely to continue to mount only relatively small deals and that even these may be few and far between.

“It is ultimately a strategic weapon,” said Mr Schmidt.

This article can be found at:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e729ed70-eb16-11dd-bb6e-0000779fd2ac,_i_email=y.html

By Richard Waters in San Francisco

Source: The Financial Times Limited 2009

Apple announced on Tuesday that former IBM executive Mark Papermaster has resolved his dispute with IBM over a noncompete agreement and will start leading Apple's iPhone group on April 24.

IBM had sued Papermaster for allegedly violating the terms of a noncompete agreement in agreeing to join Apple as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, claiming that Papermaster would be in a position to divulge important IBM trade secrets. The two parties exchanged briefing papers for a few months but apparently found a way to settle their differences.

IBM and Mr. Papermaster have now agreed on a resolution of the lawsuit under which Mr. Papermaster may not begin employment with Apple until April 24, 2009, six months after leaving IBM, and will remain subject thereafter to all of his contractual and other legal duties to IBM, including the obligation not to use or disclose IBM's confidential information.

Following commencement of his employment with Apple, Mr. Papermaster will be required to certify, in July 2009 and again in October 2009, that he has complied with his legal obligations not to use or disclose IBM's confidential or proprietary information.

The preliminary injunction will be replaced by a court order under which the court will have continuing jurisdiction over this matter, including compliance enforcement powers, until October 24, 2009, one year after Mr. Papermaster's departure from IBM.

The settlement frees Papermaster to replace Tony Fadell, who stepped into a senior adviser role last year, and report directly to CEO Steve Jobs in heading up iPhone and iPod hardware development. The leadership transition has been a bit thornier than Apple would have likely preferred.

After a brief courtship early in 2008 for a different position, Apple identified Papermaster as the right candidate to head up perhaps their most cutting-edge development team in September, and he left IBM a month later to pursue what he called "the opportunity of a lifetime."

But IBM, in what was viewed in part as a message to its employees, sued Papermaster for violating a 2006 noncompete agreement on the basis that Apple and IBM competed in the server and chip markets, even though Papermaster would not have been working in either of those capacities for Apple.

The problem for both IBM, in this case, was that to argue that Papermaster would be in a position to spill its trade secrets, the company would have had to discuss those secrets in front of a judge. And likewise for Apple, in order to prove that Papermaster wouldn't be leading an effort to get the company immersed in chip development for game consoles, it would have had to shed some light on its future plans. Neither company was likely thrilled about that prospect.

A settlement always looked like the most obvious outcome, and that's where Papermaster, IBM, and Apple find themselves Tuesday. As noted above, Papermaster will have to recertify that he will not divulge IBM secrets to Apple as part of the initial agreement, and then do so again in three-month increments until October 24th, the first anniversary of his departure from IBM, when the noncompete agreement expires.

A very interesting article for the role and benefits on creating a Knowledge mapping (KM).

http://pmtips.net/knowledge-mapping/