Senate bill would give feds bigger cybersecurity role in private sector
Two U.S. senators have introduced a bill that would give federal officials new powers to create and enforce data security standards for businesses in critical infrastructure industries. Read more...

AT&T; lobbyist urges more government coordination of cybersecurity efforts

PCI security standard gets ripped at House hearing

Former Hitachi exec indicted on LCD price-fixing charges

Judge postpones Vista Capable trial, cites 'novel' arguments

Kaiser fires 15 workers for snooping in octuplet mom's medical records

U.S. sentences first foreigner for phishing

TomTom to pay Microsoft to settle patent cases

Couple sues Acer over sluggish Vista performance

Nvidia countersues Intel for breach of contract

More Standards and Legal Issues Stories

Facebook exec on balancing privacy, business needs
CPO Chris Kelly talks about Facebook's view of privacy and how that affects its ability to serve up ads.

LinkedIn Privacy Settings: What You Need to Know
Since LinkedIn doesn't require you to share the same types of personal information as you do on Facebook, the service's privacy settings appear to be much more straightforward than its less business-oriented competitor. But if you leave the default settings in place, you might be surprised to know what information you make public on LinkedIn.

Careless with Your Business Website? Don't Get Sued.
An improperly created website can breed lawsuits. It's not the place to test the limits of the law. Once you put information out on the Net, it's there for anybody to see. It's the ultimate in unrestricted access. You might create a site for potential customers, but your competitors and enemies get to see it too. A cautious and conservative approach is the way to go. How cautious you need to be will vary depending on several things. The preventive medicine is a legal audit of your website.

Kundra takes leave, Google raises privacy flags
Well, at least the issue is not unpaid taxes this time -- but Vivek Kundra, the brand-new, first-ever federal CIO after just a few days on the job is already on a leave of absence after the office of the Washington, D.C., CTO was raided by federal agents. Kundra had been the District's CTO before President Barack Obama appointed him the nation's CIO. In other news, Google peeved privacy advocates by announcing a behavioral advertising program and separately saying it is testing a new service that will transcribe voice-mail messages and make them searchable.

People Search Engines: Slam the Door on Info
As we slowly put more and more pieces of ourselves online, specialized search engines are making it easier than ever to pull them together into a highly detailed (and potentially invasive) profile of our virtual lives.

People Search Engines: They Know Your Dark Secrets
[Editor's note: While researching this story, JR Raphael discovered the Coldplay radio station I created on Pandora on August 13, 2006; found that I had looked into purchasing a 4-foot iPod-compatible 3.5mm audio cable in October of 2007; and sleuthed out what my StumbleUpon user name is.Though only my musical taste was mildly incriminating, it was freaky to see what details popped up. (Do I want my hipster friends to know that I like Chris Martin and his melodic cohorts?) Read on to find out how deep these searches can go.]

Q&A;: 'We are willing to take that risk,' says CEO who hired convicted botnet leader
Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com, defends his decision to allow IT staffer John Schiefer to continuing working at the search engine start-up even after discovering that he had pleaded guilty to running a botnet.

Elgan: Legalize cell phone jammers?
Laws against cell phone jammers in the U.S. apply to everyone except federal government officials. Which raises the question: Is that right?

Privacy: It's the databases, stupid
There are plenty of reasons to be outraged about the recent revelation that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroid use. But the one that gets me is this: Supposedly anonymous data, which was supposedly destroyed, has instead been splashed all over the newspapers.

Extensible Access Method
This primer on XAM, or Extensible Access Method, explains how the technology is used to preserve the integrity and authenticity of 'fixed content,' such as stored e-mail or archived images.

AmigaOS, CP/M, OS/2, DOS -- which obsolete OS do you miss the most? We highlight 10 of the most memorable, along with screenshots and a timeline. Old file fragments and registry detritus can slow down your Windows PC. We tested three well-known disk cleaners to see if they could help. In an era of smarter smartphones and cheaper large laptops, are higher-cost netbooks worth a serious look? We look at four of them. Microsoft has wanted to kill Windows XP for years, but users refused to let it die. Now that Windows 7 is almost ready to go, the company is once again trying to axe XP -- and it might succeed this time, says Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.

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Learn how Xythos and Microsoft enable customers to benefit from the best of both approaches to document management and collaboration. (Source: Xythos) Savvy IT Execs are exploring options to improve SharePoint but not to replace it or create more document storage silos. This whitepaper compares Xythos Enterprise Document Management Suite with Microsoft SharePoint Server to explore the benefits and differences each application can offer and guidelines for using them in combination to better address complete ECM requirements. MarketVibe: The State of Data Governance in Enterprises Today 500% Improvement in Data Processing! Bad Broker Data is Bad for Business Data Domain for Symantec OpenStorage Primer Best Practices for Symantec NetBackup (NBU) Design Real Reuse for Requirements Forrester Consulting - Optimizing Users and Applications in a Mobile World An In-Depth Look at ROI Dell's SMART Approach to Workload Automation A Comprehensive Approach to Practicing ITIL Change Management Five Steps to Successful IT Consolidation Microsoft SharePoint Performance Brief IBM Lotus Notes Performance Brief ESG - Why SharePoint Needs Riverbed WAN Optimization Centralized Data Backup and Your WAN Business Value of Performance IDC Whitepaper Case Study - Psomas SMART Steps Toward Consolidated Workload Automation The True ROI behind WAN Optimization Extreme Savings: Cutting Costs with WAN Optimization More White Papers

If you are faced with the complexity of meeting stringent privacy policies and continually changing government requirements, the new Novell® Compliance Management Platform will provide welcome relief. Only the Novell Compliance Management Platform integrates identity, access, and security information and event management technology to provide a real-time, holistic view of all network events across an enterprise. This tight integration eases implementation while creating the ultimate governance solution; ensuring business policy becomes automated IT practice. Identity and Security Management and Strong Information Technology Governance: Novell's Solution Suite Automates the Approach to the Perfect Union This IDC White Paper examines Novell's identity and security management (ISM) solutions and how these integrated offerings can play a key role in enforcing security compliance for enterprise organizations. Success Story: New York City Transit One of the top priorities of New York City Transit is to ensure that its employees have secure and timely access to information. With a Novell® solution, the agency has automated identity management for 85,000 users, giving 49,000 employees secure, single sign-on to applications and providing 36,000 retirees with online access to benefit information. Balancing Security Against Productivity What makes for great security? Is it about keeping the bad guys out or letting the good guys in? About detecting attacks or preventing them? Security is a balancing act of all three of these and requires a holistic, integrated approach. All three disciplines must interact automatically and seamlessly to ensure an effective level of service that enables good business. View Entire Zone

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"It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Internet fraud complaints to the FBI rose significantly in 2008 (by more than..." Read more "There is no doubt that conferences can be fun. But if your employer sends you to a conference, what are..." Read more "Worried about Conficker? You don't have to be. There's a software patch that will get rid of all your Conficker..." Read more More Security Blogs See all Computerworld Blogs

Security and Trust: The Backbone of Doing Business over the Internet Earning the trust of online customers is vital for the success of any company that requires sensitive data to be transferred over the internet. With VeriSign you can put technology in place to help your online business protect customer data and build consumer trust. Learn how with this white paper. Download this white paper now!

The Spy Files For Congress to do anything that helps protect consumers and the critical Internet infrastructure as a whole, it must pass laws that require proactive processes to protect computers, not that tell people how to deal with the resulting mess, says Ira Winkler. Click here to read the latest column by Ira Winkler

In Security Stripping away the trappings of applications, systems and networks, information is the core asset of most organizations. Our columnist describes how asserting the importance of information governance is crucial to making that asset tangible, addressable and protected. Click here to read the latest column by Jon Espenschied