Guest Columns

Survey: Shelved Tech Projects To Proceed

NEW YORK - Technology executives are signaling a readiness to make critical IT investments, a new survey shows. More than one-third (37 percent) of chief information officers (CIOs) interviewed said, post-recession, they plan to implement software and hardware upgrades that had been deferred due to a soft economy. Others foresee moving forward with virtualization projects

By |2010-02-25T00:00:00-05:00February 25th, 2010|Archive, Guest Columns|

BlackBerry Has Spyware Risk Too, Researcher Says

SAN FRANCISCO - We've heard a lot about security issues with the iPhone, but the BlackBerry isn't immune to threats from malicious apps. Tyler Shields, a senior researcher at the Veracode Research Lab, has written a piece of spyware that allowed me to shoot an SMS command to his phone and have his contact list

By |2010-02-11T00:00:00-05:00February 11th, 2010|Archive, Guest Columns|

Some Important Views On the China-Google Affair

BIRMINGHAM - We have had eleven days to absorb the implications of wide spread Chinese supported attacks against Google and thirty or so other organizations. The US Secretary of State made one of the most affirmative statements on Internet freedom yet articulated by a government. Various policy analysts have chimed in as well. Some thoughts

By |2010-02-11T00:00:00-05:00February 11th, 2010|Archive, Guest Columns|

Google Engages In Cyber Vigilantism

BIRMINGHAM - Last month, I related communications I had with The Jester, an individual who has decided to express his outrage at Jihadist organizations by systematically taking down their web sites. A week later, we learned that engineers at Google had been engaging in their own form of cyber vigilantism by hacking into a command

By |2010-02-11T00:00:00-05:00February 11th, 2010|Archive, Guest Columns|

Cyber Vigilante Takes On Islamic ExtremistsR

BIRMINGHAM - I had an interesting demonstration in January from a hacker who goes by the handle "The Jester" or in so-called l33t speak, th3j35t3r which is his Twitter ID. Since January 1, The Jester has been systematically wreaking havoc with several websites he associates with Al Quiada and Jihadists via a Denial of Service

By |2010-02-11T00:00:00-05:00February 11th, 2010|Archive, Guest Columns|

Security Myth Busting Monday

BIRMINGHAM - The attacks against Google emanating from China and the subsequent speech by the US Secretary of State on Internet Freedom have exposed cyber security issues to a wider audience in recent weeks. Perhaps predictably some old ideas are creeping up that should be slapped down quickly. Myth number 1. The US engages in

By |2010-02-02T00:00:00-05:00February 2nd, 2010|Archive, Guest Columns|

Solar Panels, Tax Incentives, And Your House

BLOOMFIELD HILLS - During the summer of 2008, gas prices went through the roof, and the United States refocused on renewable energy. Americans say they desire energy independence from foreign nations and environmentally sound renewable energy sources. To that end, the federal and state governments have enacted a number of alternative energy laws, including the

By |2010-01-24T00:00:00-05:00January 24th, 2010|Archive, Guest Columns|

2010 IT Budgets Shrink To 2005 Levels

STAMFORD, Conn. - IT budgets will essentially be flat in 2010, increasing by a weighted global average of 1.3 percent in nominal terms, Compared with 2009 levels where IT budgets declined 8.1 percent, that's not bad at all. These are among the results from the 2010 CIO survey by Gartner Executive Programs (EXP). 2009 was

By |2010-01-19T00:00:00-05:00January 19th, 2010|Archive, Guest Columns|

Putting Chinese Cyber Espionage In Perspective

BIRMINGHAM - Last Tuesday Google announced that they had been hacked by sources in China. The target was email accounts of Chinese activists and bloggers. An outraged Google threatened to discontinue censoring search results at the Google China search engine google.cn. Yahoo chimed in support of Google. Yahoo of course is another Internet company with

By |2010-01-19T00:00:00-05:00January 19th, 2010|Archive, Guest Columns|