Daily Digest 8 August

08-08-2008

by Billy MacInnes

Businesses suffer lax wireless security | IBM software and services target mobile web

Many businesses in Ireland could be failing to protect their wireless networks properly, if a survey of industrial areas in Dublin by security specialist Espion is anything to go by. The company found a quarter of the 847 wireless access points it identified in industrial areas were unsecured. The figure compares unfavourably to residential areas where 16 percent of wireless access points were unsecured. Stephen O'Boyle security consultant at Espion suggested businesses could be more at risk because their wireless connections were likely to be older and less secure. They might also suffer from a lack of awareness of the risks of having an insecure wireless access point. The need to be more aware of the risks attached to computer security have been amplified by reports of a major web security breach at an Irish retailer that compromised the credit card details of hundreds of customers. According to the Irish Examiner, all the major banks are contacting customers affected to cancel their cards and reissue new ones.

IBM has announced a number of software products and launched mobile consulting services to address the growing requirement for mobile employees and executives to collaborate across business and geographic boundaries. The company is also providing developers with new tools to make existing software applications run on mobile devices. Drew Clark, director of strategy at IBM Venture Capital Group, said the mobile web "presents one of the largest emerging market opportunities we've seen in a decade as billions of people look to access a wide range of services both for business and personal use".

The organisers of the Black Hat conference have thrown out three French journalists for 'sniffing' the event's press room and stealing the user names and passwords of two fellow journalists. The trio, all from Global Security Mag (a media sponsor of the event), had their badges confiscated and were also barred from Defcon, a related security conference this weekend. The journalists were uncovered after they took their computer to an area known as the Wall of Sheep, which monitors wireless network activity, and asked to display the user names and passwords. Marc Brami, director of the magazine, told CNet News: "For us, it was like a joke."

A service that allows people to call in their message to Twitter has added the ability for people to listen to up to ten messages from friends over their phone and respond to them directly. Twitterfone CEO Pat Phelan said the service allowed people to conduct "two and multi-way conversations on Twitter using any phone" while they were on the move. Meanwhile, anti-virus company Kaspersky reported it had found a malicious Twitter profile that uses the lure of a pornographic video to install a fake version of Adobe Flash and steal data from an infected PC.

A UK STG1.9m Northern Ireland broadband fund has been established to help businesses focusing on high speed broadband services with a special emphasis on delivering broadband into rural areas. Economy minister Arlene Foster said the fund provided an opportunity to pilot emerging technologies for the delivery of next generation broadband services. Providing affordable and commercially sustainable solutions for delivery of broadband services to rural areas would be one of the biggest challenges, she added.

Just under a half of all US internet users are using search engines on a typical day, bringing it closer to overhauling email as the most popular use of the web. Research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project revealed the number using search engines had risen from a third in 2002 to 49 percent. In the same time period, email usage increased from 52 percent to 60 percent. Checking the news was also a popular daily internet activity for 39 percent of users and 30 percent checked the weather every day. The research found people with higher levels of education and from higher income households were more likely to use search engines. Younger people also used it more.