Microsoft exec says Safe Harbor framework is ‘alive and well’
Privacy advocates have expressed concern about Brussels' Commissioner Viviane Reding's decision to leave in place the Safe Harbour framework used by some companies to transfer data from Europe to the US.
The EC's vice president tabled her draft bill for the overhaul of the EU's 1995 data protection law on Wednesday.
However, critics have questioned how the Safe Harbour scheme can remain workable within the wider context of the commissioner's DP legislation proposals.
EU data protection laws currently state that organisations must tell people when they are asked to disclose their personal information. Some companies that meet the requirements of Europe's DP directive are allowed to transfer EU data to the US.
Microsoft is one of them.
Reding's proposals state:
Article 41 sets out the criteria, conditions and procedures for the adoption of an adequacy decision by the Commission, based on Article 25 of Directive 95/46/EC. The criteria which shall be taken into account for the Commission’s assessment of an adequate or not adequate level of protection include expressly the rule of law, judicial redress and independent supervision. The article now confirms explicitly the possibility for the Commission to assess the level of protection afforded by a territory or a processing sector within a third country. Read more...
SHARE
Enterprise gets social: Twitter-style data streams, engagement ‘apps’
Enterprise software developers are just as talented as their free-wheeling consumer-facing peers, but are shackled by the need to prioritise enterprise security over personal utility, and by the fact that IT buyers differ significantly from IT users, as 37 Signals' Jason Fried has pointed out. But a new breed of enterprise software seeks to overlay and augment crufty old systems with dynamic, user-friendly social software, and may well become a $4bn market within the next five years, according to Wells Fargo analyst Jason Maynard.
Data, not surprisingly, is both the engine behind this shift and the glue sticking it all together.
Enterprise software systems, new or old, throw off immense amounts of data, or "digital exhaust". With the rise of programmable interfaces, or APIs, getting access to that exhaust is easier than ever, but data is only useful if harnessed, made comprehensible, and turned to business value.
Unfortunately, most data is "exhaust" in the traditional sense of the word: waste. If enterprises collect data they do so in data warehouses that sit largely untapped. This is a shame given the potential of data to transform the way we work.
Enter the data stream. Read more...
SHARE
SOPA’s big brother signed by EU nations amid widespread protests
The European Union signed up to the controversial Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on Thursday despite widespread opposition, particularly in Poland, where people took to the streets in protest.
The agreement was officially signed in Tokyo by 22 European member states. Cyprus, Estonia, Slovakia, Germany and the Netherlands did not sign, but committed to do so in the near future, according to the European Parliament's Green party.
The agreement seeks to enforce intellectual property rights and combat online piracy and illegal software. But opponents of ACTA claim it goes far beyond the U.S.' doomed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislation and encourages ISPs to police the internet without any legal safeguards. SOPA is being revised after receiving broad criticism.
The ACTA agreement, meanwhile, has been mired in controversy from the beginning due to secrecy imposed by the U.S. and worries that it may not uphold E.U. rules on data privacy. The most controversial paragraph in the final text leaves the door open for countries to introduce the so-called three-strikes rule, which would require Internet users to be cut off if they continue to download copyright material after receiving two warnings, as national authorities would be able to order ISPs to disclose personal information about customers. Read more...
SHARE
Apple customers voice mixed reaction to reports of poor working conditions
Amid renewed reports of poor working conditions at factories making Apple products in China, it's unclear whether customers will demand change.
Some Apple customers at the Macworld/iWorld show in San Francisco Thursday seemed to react with a shrug to a lengthy New York Times story alleging poor working conditions at Chinese factories operated by Apple contractors. The story described fatal accidents at some plants, long work hours and crowded living conditions in dorms near work.
The report is unlikely to change Apple customers' buying habits, said Steve Hathaway, a show attendee from Hercules, California.
"Most all companies are getting their stuff made and shipped from elsewhere 'cause it's cheaper," he said.
Hathaway was asked if Apple customers would pay more for products from companies that ensure safety. "Apple already has a premium price, you'd think they should be doing something on their end of it to make it right, you know?" he said. "It isn't like they're passing on a huge savings to us compared to other PC makers." Read more...
SHARE
Google says privacy change won’t affect government users
Google today dismissed concerns by a former senior federal IT official that the company's controversial new privacy policy would create problems for customers of Google Apps for Government (GAFG).
In a statement, Google said the new policy will not change existing contracts that define how it handles and stores data belonging to government users of its cloud services. "Enterprise customers using Google Apps for Government, Business or Education have individual contracts that define how we handle and store their data," Amit Singh, vice president of Google Enterprise said in a statement.
"As always, Google will maintain our enterprise customers' data in compliance with the confidentiality and security obligations provided to their domain," he said.
According to Singh, Googles contractual agreements have always superseded its privacy policy for enterprise customers.
All core productivity and collaboration applications that a government, business or educational institution pays for are covered by contract, a Google spokesman today said. However, if an administrator were to turn on a Google application not covered by the contract, that application would be subject to Googles new privacy rules, he said. Read more...
SHARE
Researchers unearth more Chinese links to defense contractor attacks
Researchers with Symantec have uncovered additional clues that point to Chinese hacker involvement in attacks against a large number of Western companies, including major U.S. defense contractors.
The attacks use malicious PDF documents that exploit an Adobe Reader bug patched last month to infect Windows PCs with "Sykipot," a general-purpose backdoor Trojan horse.
According to findings published Thursday by Symantec's research team, a "staging server" used by the attackers is based in the Beijing area, and is hosted by one of the country's largest Internet service providers, or ISPs.
Symantec did not identify the ISP. Read more...
SHARE
The top 10 H-1B visa users in the U.S.
Offshore outsourcing companies continued to make up the majority of the top 10 H-1B visa users in 2011, according to new government data. These offshore firms have been adding employees by the thousands as their revenues increase.
Cognizant, a New Jersey-based IT services provider with major operations overseas, led the list. The company had 4,222 initial or new visas approved and 1,493 renewal petitions.
Google was last on the list, with 383 new H-1B visas and 232 renewals.
Offshoring is showing signs of being a major political issue this year, but opinions remain divided.
President Barack Obama highlighted it in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. But he hasn't coupled offshore outsourcing with visa usage. One of the leading Republican candidates, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, has called for eliminating the H-1B cap and says the cap policy is wrong.
The data for this story comes from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. One list shows new applications for H-1B visas; the second list shows the combined totals for new visas and renewals. A H-1B visa must be renewed every three years. Read more...
SHARE
IT groups grapple with managing fast-growing iOS devices
Apple recently has improved its mobile device management features, but IT groups are discovering a new set of challenges when they start to move to larger numbers of iOS devices, MacIT conference attendees are confirming this week.
Marin County Day School, in Corte Madera, Calif., ran a pilot program of about 60 iOS devices for students in 2011. From an IT viewpoint, it was a continuous discovery of the current limitations of Apple's tools. The small staff was backing up each iPad individually, says IT director Robert Bardenhagen.
"Scaling is a problem," he says. That's daunting because the K-8 school, like many enterprises, is eager to expand the population of iOS devices.
Another issue was Apple's model of users pulling apps individually from the iTunes App Store. Bardenhagen, with an IT manager's viewpoint, is looking at a push model, which would let IT create, maintain and update an institutional software image on the devices. Read more...
SHARE
How to prevent thumb drive security disasters
For such a small device, the plastic, handheld USB flash drive can cause big security headaches. Even if you have robust end-point security and establish rigid policies about employee use of these drives, employees still find a way to copy financial reports and business plans for use at home. While other security breaches are more traceable, a flash drive is more difficult to monitor, especially after the employee leaves work.
Some security professionals suggest a radical approach to locking down USB flash drives. Sean Greene, a security consultant at Evidence Solutions, advises his clients to use a clear silicone caulk and fill every USB port on every PC to prevent USB attachments. He says the only way employees can transmit sensitive business documents is by email, a method that his clients can easily monitor.
Chris Harget, a spokesperson for security vendor ActivIdentity, adds that many military organizations don't allow the drives at all, and they have resorted to gluing USB ports closed to prevent breaches.
Yet, in the modern IT climate, CIOs know they have to provide the services employees need to do their jobs, and that can include using a USB drive. For example, in a sales organization, employees often need to load PowerPoint slides, which may contain company financials, onto a USB flash drive. Read more...
SHARE
Drive-by-download attack exploits critical vulnerability in Windows Media Player
Security researchers from antivirus vendor Trend Micro have come across a Web-based attack that exploits a known vulnerability in Windows Media Player.
"Earlier today, we encountered a malware that exploits a recently (and publicly) disclosed vulnerability, the MIDI Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2012-0003)," Trend Micro threat response engineer Roland Dela Paz said in a blog post on Thursday.
The security flaw can be exploited by tricking the victim into opening a specially crafted MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) file in Windows Media Player.
Microsoft released a security fix for it on Jan. 10, as part of its monthly patch cycle. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system," the company said at the time. Read more...
SHARE
John Deere plows into agile
John Deere & Co., has moved about 800 software developers into an agile development process, and did so in just over a year.
This effort involved recreating the farm equipment maker's software development effort around new teams that included developers, systems engineers, customer support and marketing personnel, testers, all working in lose proximity.
This company, which reported $32 billion in revenue last year, replaced its cubicles with U-shaped pods that removed barriers to team interaction.
The move to agile came "after some serious introspection in our development organization," said Tony Thelen, the director of the Intelligent Solutions Group, part of the company's enterprise IT operation. Read more...
SHARE
Charge 16 gadgets at once with the PowerPad 16
How many portable gadgets do you own that need charging on a regular basis? A typical user may have a smartphone, a tablet, an e-reader, and a digital media player. Most will have fewer than those four core types of device.
I doubt anyone has 16 devices to charge, but if you do, there’s now a solution for charging them all over USB at the same time. It’s called the PowerPad 16, which has been created by Datamation Systems Inc.
Of course, the PowerPad 16 isn’t a charging solution aimed at the home user, but it could make your life easier when out in public. We take our devices with us to school, college, conferences, and on holiday. They need charging on a regular basis, which means searching out a power point, and hoping someone else hasn’t got there first. Read more...
SHARE
Threatened by Anonymous, Symantec tells users to pull pcAnywhere’s plug
Symantec this week took the highly unusual step of telling users of its pcAnywhere remote access software to disable or uninstall the software while it fixes an unknown number of bugs.
Security experts said the move was unprecedented for a company of Symantec's size.
"This is the first time I have seen a company of Symantec's scale tell their customers to stop using a shipping product, especially one that many users depend on for remote access," said HD Moore, chief technology officer of Rapid7, and the creator of the popular Metasploit penetration testing toolkit.
"It's certainly a new precedent for a security breach," added Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security. "Talk about dirty laundry getting aired."
Symantec's recommendation was blunt. Read more...
SHARE
Jailbreaking may again become illegal this year
If you plan on jailbreaking your iPhone 4S using the new Greenpois0n Absinthe software, you better hurry because there's a chance jailbreaking smartphones could become illegal again in the United States. Two exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that allow you to jailbreak and unlock your phone are set to expire this year.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, is hoping to have both exemptions renewed. This time around, the foundation is also hoping to legalize jailbreaking for tablets and video game consoles such as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. If the jailbreaking exemptions are not renewed, the foundation says, jailbreaking could carry some stiff penalties including hefty fines. Read more...
SHARE
Nintendo cuts full-year forecast – by BILLIONS
The mighty yen and weak sales have combined to take a whack out of Nintendo, forcing the Japanese gaming firm to forecast an even bigger full-year loss.
The Wii and 3DS maker had previously estimated a net income loss for the financial year ending in March of 20 billion yen, but it's now preparing itself to lose up to a whopping 65 billion yen.
Nintendo's once-groundbreaking Wii has been overtaken by motion-additions to Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's Xbox, and is showing its age. Meanwhile, the new iteration of its handheld console, the 3DS, has failed to ignite the market.
The Japanese firm cut its sales forecast of the Wii for the year to 10 million from 12 million and now reckons it will sell 14 million 3DS devices instead of 16 million – despite a "significant price revision" in August intending to shift more of the handhelds. Read more...
SHARE
Microsoft’s magic bullet for Azure: Red Hat Linux
If Microsoft loves money, and it does, then making Linux publicly available on its proprietary Azure cloud can't come soon enough.
Last June Microsoft ran a build of Linux on its Windows Azure compute fabric in the labs of the Server and Tools division, which is responsible for its cloud.
What flavour of Linux? Red Hat, sources close to the company now tell The Reg.
That's a critical pick given North Carolina's favourite brand of Linux continues to reign as the market's number-one distro and is a preferred choice for Windows shops when going Linux. Read more...
SHARE
SAP’s HANA in-memory database will run ERP this year
SAP plans to roll out support for the ERP module within its flagship Business Suite product family on the HANA in-memory database platform in the fourth quarter of this year, executive board member and technology chief Vishal Sikka said in an interview Wednesday.
The vendor had previously stated its intention to support Business Suite on HANA, a move that would pave the way for SAP application-customer defections from rival Oracle's database, but until now no specific date had been made public.
"It's a bold statement to say they can do this by Q4," said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research. "If they can do this, it means they've solved a lot of the technical issues with HANA. This means they have the beginning of a next-gen platform for their apps." Read more...
SHARE
What JavaScript’s inventor really thinks about Google Dart
Google's Dart language, which attempts to address JavaScript's supposed weaknesses, is getting a mixed reaction from the inventor of JavaScript itself, Brendan Eich.
While admiring Google's efforts to make the Document Object Model more usable as part of Dart, Eich was skeptical about its chance for support in browsers. "Dart is one of the many languages that currently compiles to JavaScript, and that's a lot to say about that because like in Native Client from Google, I don't think Dart is going to be natively supported ever in other browsers. Not in Safari, not in IE (Internet Explorer)," said Eich, who is CTO at Mozilla, at the Node Summit conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. JavaScript has been supported in popular browsers, including Mozilla's own Firefox browser. Read more...
SHARE
EMI Boss Opposes SOPA, Says Piracy is a Service Issue
The RIAA has been one of the most dedicated supporters of the PIPA and SOPA bills, but not all of the people they represent share their enthusiasm. EMI’s VP of Urban Promotions Craig Davis made some very reasonable remarks on the controversial anti-piracy plans, stating that “the method they’re using is incorrect.” In addition, the VP says that he’s no fan of DRM and that piracy is a service issue, not an issue of money.
In recent weeks millions of people have spoken out against the pending PIPA and SOPA anti-piracy bills, which have both been delayed as a result.
Today we can add a VP at one of the major RIAA labels to this list, which is quite unique and yet another game changer.
Speaking for himself, EMI’s VP of Urban Promotions Craig Davis said that the two pending anti-piracy bills are not the way to move forward. Read more...
SHARE
HP’s open-sourcing of webOS begins today
The last time we heard about webOS, HP had opted to open-source the mobile platform, letting developers take a stab at breathing some life into it. It was an unconventional move, but not necessarily a bad one: it puts the platform largely in the hands of the development community, and it doesn’t require a large investment.
Today we found out more about HP’s plans for the second coming of webOS. The first step of the open sourcing process, the release of the Enyo application framework, took place today. The entire process is expected to be completed by September of this year. Upon completion of the open-sourcing transition, it will be known as Open webOS 1.0. Read more...
SHARE
Pope praises Twitter and your ‘profound’ tweets
Pope Benedict XVI has given a tentative thumbs-up to micro-blogging sites such as Twitter, but explained to his followers that they may reap more spiritual reward by just piping down a bit online.
In his annual message ahead of the Catholic church’s World Communications Day, the Pontiff chose to focus on the virtue of silence in the modern world - but proved he can also mix with Web 2.0 trendies in a thinly veiled reference to Twitter and its ilk.
“Attention should be paid to the various types of websites, applications and social networks which can help people today to find time for reflection and authentic questioning, as well as making space for silence and occasions for prayer, meditation or sharing of the word of God,” he said. Read more...
SHARE
Google plays the long game with ChromeOS
Google is betting that slow and steady will prove a winning strategy for its ChromeOS platform, and is reporting some successes for the system in the education sector.
It has been a little over a year since Google first showed off ChromeOS, and around six months since the first commercial systems were released for sale by Samsung and Acer. There’s new hardware scheduled for later this year, but the operating system – indeed the very notion of a browser-based operating system – appears to have found little traction in the wider industry.
However, according to Caesar Sengupta, product management director at Google, the company is playing the long game with ChromeOS, making steady improvements in the system as it stands and letting it find its market.
“As Google we haven’t really pushed these devices yet,” he told The Register. “This is so important to us, we can’t rush it.” Read more...
SHARE
Impact of Thailand floods continues to bite tech industry
Nvidia lowered its revenue forecast Tuesday for the quarter ending Jan. 29, citing the impact of the hard disk drive (HDD) shortage caused by the Thailand floods on its mainstream GPU business.
Competitors Intel and Advanced Micro Devices also reported that they were affected by the floods, as HDD manufacturers like Western Digital start to bring their operations back to normal in Thailand.
Research firm Gartner however warned earlier this month that the major impact of the HDD shortage after the floods will be felt in the first half of this year, and even potentially continue through the year. The shortage had a limited impact on fourth quarter PC shipments and prices, but PC shipment growth could be temporarily affected during 2012, it said. Read more...
SHARE
Obama attacks offshoring, seeks visa reform
In his State of the Union Speech, President Barack Obama Tuesday night attacked offshoring, urged businesses to bring jobs back to the U.S., and renewed his appeal for visa reforms to keep foreign students from returning home after earning advanced degrees.
Obama Tuesday made many references to tech, to business start-ups and to innovation in the speech.
He urged Congress to back policies that help "every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs."
Laurene Powell Jobs, his widow, was among the invited guests.
Obama to date has had mixed record in the IT sector, especially in returning tech manufacturing jobs from offshore.
Obama has had no success in persuading Congress to undertake employment-based immigration reform and last year also appealed to Congress to give green cards to foreign students earning advanced degrees. Read more...
SHARE