By Edward C. Lanfranco -
Beijing, China, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- The Taoist symbol of a circle divided by a half black, half white, swirl representing yin-yang forces of dark and light aptly describes the situation in the People's Republic of China during last year.
China glittered on the world stage as a rising economic leviathan, but in 2004 the country remained a giant in the dark, tied down by Lilliputian politics.
His strategy wins nation clout on the global stage
BRASÍLIA Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, a cinema buff and former movie producer, likes to go over a script in his mind of Brazil's future.
In it, Brazil shakes its postcolonial insecurity and takes the helm of South America to the United Nations, where it lands a full-time seat on an enlarged Security Council, along with its "kindred spirit," India. Latin America's largest country also helps rewrite rules about access to global agriculture markets. Finally, it shrinks poverty for its 184 million residents through stronger trade ties with Asia.
By Andrew Orlowski -
Analysis In rejecting Microsoft's appeal this week a European court has dealt a significant setback to Redmond's attempts to mount an attack on competitors based on intellectual property litigation.
The decision by Judge Bo Vesterdorf at the European Court of the First Instance reveals for the first time many of the legal arguments that were made behind closed doors this year. The parts that interest us here are the decision itself, which rejects the idea that communication protocols are any kind of "trade secret" [*], and the slightly astonishing admission from Microsoft itself that suing people for IP violations is bothersome, or in its lawyers' own words: "a particularly complicated and inefficient exercise."
By W. David Gardner, TechWeb.com -
Younger people--"tweens" and teens--are more likely than adults to believe that technology will be vital to their future, but they are less likely to support the protection of intellectual property, according to a poll released Wednesday.
That is just one of the disconnects found in the poll conducted by the Harris Interactive market-research firm for the Business Software Alliance (BSA). The poll found that almost all tweens and teens (98 percent) believe that improvements in technology will be essential or important to their future, while the percentage dropped to 87 percent for adults.
By Marguerite Reardon -
Cisco Systems' new security architecture is gaining momentum.
On Monday, Cisco announced that 15 companies have signed on as partners, promising to deliver products compatible with Cisco's Network Admission Control (NAC) architecture in the first part of 2005.
NAC is a security architecture that combines virus scanning with network policing to keep attacks from entering the network. It requires software "trust agents" to be deployed on every client. Network devices then communicate with the "trust agents" via special protocols to make sure that devices connecting to the network are free of viruses and have up-to-date security software running.
Having been plagued with e-bugs, Bill and the Boyz say they’ll use intellectual property and technology assets from the acquisition to provide Microsoft Windows customers with new tools to help protect them from the threat of spyware, and other deceptive software.
And, “key personnel from GIANT Company will be joining Microsoft’s security efforts,” says Microsoft.
It’ll make the software available to Windows customers in a, “spyware protection, detection and removal tool, based on the GIANT AntiSpyware product” beta within one month, it promises.
By Faultline -
Analysis Just about a year from today, if not sooner, if we believe the outpourings of both the DVD Forum and the Blu-Ray Disc Association, we will be able to go out to the shops and buy blue laser, high definition, high density DVDs in two completely different designs. We will also be able to buy the players and recorders by then, as well as studio content from virtually every major studio in the world, on one or the other system.
If you believe the hype, DVD manufacturers will likely have to buy in two types of DVD manufacturing equipment. Households will have to buy two DVD players. Consumers will have to buy one PC with one type of high density DVD player and buy another separate player to read the other format of disk.
By Jiang Zhuqing (China Daily) -
Judicial departments plan to lower the legal threshold for intellectual property rights crimes.
By promulgating and enforcing a new judicial interpretation, what was once a simple intellectual property infringement may soon be a crime, said an official with the Supreme People's Court yesterday.
At the same time, police departments are launching the "Eagle Programme," a year-long crackdown on crimes related to brand names or intellectual property.
During the month of November more than 1,317 individuals contributed to counterfeit losses totaling $580,520,557 USD. Counterfeit enforcement agents also seized 3,997,394 items worth $617,044,643 USD. As reported by Gieschen Consultancy, the top countries that aggressively pursued counterfeiters, were the Philippines (47%, $568,137,600), Greece (30%, $361,040,000), Russia (17%, $200,050,000), Lithuania (2%, $23,950,000), USA (1%, $8,855,950), UK (1%, $8,395,800). China ranked 16th.
Based on the past month of worldwide counterfeit enforcement activity (investigations, raids, seizures, arrests, charges, convictions, sentences, public announcements), as reported through the DOPIP Security Counterfeit Intelligence Report, more than 197 incidents were analyzed.
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 13, 2004--Nortel (NYSE:NT)(TSX:NT) has teamed with Microsoft to support Microsoft's Network Access Protection (NAP), an extensible standards-based technology that will enable users to more securely access their corporate networks and reduce the complexity of network access for IT administrators.
Microsoft and Nortel are working together with other industry-leading security companies to develop industry standards, network designs and solutions intended to secure critical information by protecting the communications infrastructure as well as user computing devices like desktop and laptop computers.
By Jon Oltsik -
If you want to see a good example of security, think of your local bank.
At many large branches, customers are greeted at the front door by an armed guard providing perimeter security. Inside, the bank is well-equipped with security cameras for surveillance and manual alarms that can be activated by threatened tellers.
NEW YORK, Dec. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Ziff Davis eSeminars just completed its first-ever Security Virtual Tradeshow and by every measure the event was a great success. Nearly 4,500 senior-level technology executives registered for the two-day, interactive event and more than 1,800 unique visitors attended.
The Security Virtual Tradeshow, held from November 30 through December 1, featured keynote presentations, customer meetings and vendor product demonstrations from a dozen leading security companies who signed-on as sponsors and speakers. Symantec, St. Bernard Software, Proofpoint, Pitney Bowes, AEP Systems, Nortel Networks and a host of other top companies shared their industry know-how and showcased the latest security technology products and services in a real-time setting at the show's interactive tradeshow booths.
By Andrew Salmon -
Seoul North Korea has revised its criminal code, South Korea's National Intelligence Service said Wednesday, in what appeared to be an effort to deter antistate activities.
The revisions also reduced sanctions against North Koreans who left the country for economic reasons.
South Korea's Ministry of Unification had no comment on the significance of the legal changes.
By Larry Seltzer -
When I look back at all the major bad security news in 2004, I wonder how the world's computing infrastructure still manages to get up in the morning. It looks a lot worse in retrospect than it felt while it was going on.
Year of the worm
The year began with several new and successful worms, starting with Bagle. MyDoom and Netsky followed soon after. Most of these worms include a "backdoor" program allowing a remote attacker to take control of the infected system. It's generally assumed that the real purpose of these worms, as with earlier worms such as last year's Sobig, is to provide a platform for spammers and other sociopaths to do their dirty work. Nevertheless, all three brought us some innovation.
By Thomas Hartley -
FBI statistics show the scope of what's at stake for cybercriminals and terrorists.
- The United States has an estimated 206 million computer users.
- More than half of U.S. homes have a personal computer.
- Seventy-six percent of Americans utilize the Internet.
With those numbers, it's no wonder cyber evildoers are attracted like moths to a burning candle.
By Gregg Keizer -
The spyware plague on both your consumer and corporate houses will trigger a 2,500 percent increase in enterprise spending by 2008, a market-research firm report released Thursday claimed.
According to Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, the need to search out and destroy spyware will drive anti-spyware software revenues from $12 million in 2003, to $31 million in 2004, to $305 million in 2008. This is great news for vendors already in the space- such as Webroot and Computer Associates-owned PestPatrol--as well as for the anti-virus firms just now entering the marketplace.
The University of Texas has established a new security center to address the growing cybersecurity problems across the country.
The Center for Information Assurance and Security's goal is to conduct research that will lead to innovative cybersecurity solutions and address the national need to produce more trained professionals in the field.
As part of the reasoning behind the need for the center, UT alluded to recent surveys highlighting statistics about Internet and data security.
