IT NEWS
Oracle, SAP Agree to Time Extension in Trade Secrets Suit
It appears both sides in
Oracle's contentious trade-secrets lawsuit against SAP would
appreciate a little more breathing room.
Although there's little love lost between the bitter applications
rivals, they have agreed to a legal stipulation extending the time
for Oracle to file an amended complaint and for SAP to respond to
that filing. The lawyers representing the companies signed the
agreement on Tuesday.
Oracle fired the opening salvo against SAP on March 22, filing a
surprise lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern
District of California. In the suit, Oracle charged SAP, its SAP
America division, its TomorrowNow subsidiary and 50 unnamed
individuals Oracle claimed were SAP employees violating U.S. fraud
legislation and engaging in unfair competition and civil conspiracy.
Oracle's complaint alleged that one or more staff at TomorrowNow,
SAP's third-party maintenance subsidiary, pretended to be Oracle
customers and illegally hacked into Oracle's secure support Website
for users of PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications. The employees
then allegedly downloaded vast amounts of confidential Oracle
software and support material.
Oracle further charged that SAP copied the Oracle content and used
it to offer Oracle customers cut-rate support services with the
ultimate aim of persuading them to dump Oracle applications in favor
of SAP's alternative software.
So far, both sides appear at loggerheads, with Oracle not backing
down and SAP saying it will defend itself aggressively. While Oracle
executives have not commented publicly on the lawsuit, SAP CEO
Henning Kagermann spoke out in April. "We have no intention to
settle; why should we?" he said during SAP's first-quarter earnings
call. "We don't think anything is wrong with our company."
Oracle had been set to file an amended complaint to its lawsuit
between April 21 and May 18, but instead that date has now been put
back to no later than June 1, according to Tuesday's court
stipulation. Likewise, SAP was on track to respond to Oracle's
amended complaint within 20 days of its appearance, the vendor now
has until July 2 to file a response.
Source: IDG News Service (Boston Bureau)
Microsoft to Pay $6B for aQuantive
Microsoft didn't waste much time taking a shot at rival
Google's plan to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, offering a hefty
$6 billion to buy aQuantive, a digital marketing services agency, as
a way to boost Microsoft's Internet advertising business.
Speculation remains rife that Google wants to buy Yahoo. Time will
tell if the deal announced this week is part of a bigger plan.
Talking about Microsoft, —time will tell where aQuantive fits as
part of a bigger plan.
Source: CIO.com
IBM and Amazon.com Settle All Patent
Litigation
Amazon.com has paid IBM an undisclosed amount of money to settle all
outstanding patent lawsuits between the two companies. They have
also agreed on a long-term patent cross-licensing agreement, giving
Amazon access to IBM's patents on Web technology, the vendors said.
The agreement will give Amazon greater freedom to innovate, the
online retailer said, while IBM for its part looks forward to a more
productive relationship between the two companies than they have had
of late.
The two companies have been haggling over patents since September
2002: That's when IBM said it first approached Amazon about a
licensing deal.
However, they failed to reach an agreement, and so IBM sued Amazon
in October 2006, alleging that the company was infringing on a
number of its U.S. patents, including those relating to storing data
in an interactive network (number 5,442,771), adjusting hypertext
links with weighted user goals and activities (5,446,891) and
ordering items using an electronic catalog (5,319,542).
Two months later, Amazon countersued, claiming that IBM's WebSphere
application server infringed on Amazon patents.
In its suit, Amazon said IBM's patent claims were so broad as to be
ridiculous, as they would potentially cover everyone using a browser
to surf the Web. The suit also pointed out that IBM had waited for
seven years after Amazon launched its online store, finally
approaching the Internet Company just as it became profitable.
In the field of patents, Amazon is perhaps best known for its claim
to ownership of the one-click online shopping method. It sued
bookseller rival Barnes & Noble.com for infringement of this patent
in 1999, with the two finally settling the case on undisclosed terms
in March 2002.
Source: IDG News Service
TRENDS
Symantec:
Chinese Hackers Grow in Number, Skills
China's hacking scene appears poised for growth, as the number of
Internet users with a commensurate interest in criminal hacking and
government spying rises, according to a new Symantec study.
"China’s hacking scene is clearly an active one," the report said.
"These individuals and groups are known for discovering
vulnerabilities, writing exploit code and developing sophisticated
hacking techniques."
China ranks second behind the United States as far as malicious
activity on the Internet as a whole, Symantec said, citing its own
data. The country had 131 million Internet users as of the end of
2006, accounting for about 10 percent of its population and 11
percent of the world's Internet users.
A well-known cyber war between Chinese and American hackers erupted
in April 2001 following the collision of a U.S. military spy plane
and Chinese fighter. U.S. government websites were hacked and
defaced with slogans such as "Beat down imperialism of American,"
courtesy of a group calling itself the Honker Union of China.
Not to be out hacked, U.S. hackers responded over China's handling
of the incident, which involved an awkward demand for an apology.
But perhaps more disturbing has been the efficient ways through
which Chinese hackers are believed to have obtained sensitive
information. In June 2004, South Korea was reportedly victimized by
a concerted attack using Trojan horse programs—which appear harmless
but have malicious functions—to pilfer classified documents on
weapons systems.
In total, 211 South Korean government computers are believed to have
been compromised, in addition to 67 other machines belonging to
companies, media groups and universities, according to Symantec.
Chinese computer gurus have also experimented with the
"pump-and-dump" scheme, a trick used to inflate stock prices for
profit, Symantec said. Starting in October 2004, a group used a
Trojan horse to steal account details for users of several online
stock traders, and then used the accounts to run up certain stocks.
The victims lost more than US$1.3 million, with the attackers
profiting around $114,000.
But in recent years, some of the bad guys have come clean, starting
up their own computer security companies. China now has about six
antivirus vendors, in addition to a number of computer security
research and consulting groups.
However, there's "growing concern of an escalated cyber threat from
China, from the perspective of both governments and enterprises",
Symantec said
Source: IDG News Service
ERP, Security among Top Concerns for Higher-Ed IT Pros
A new EDUCAUSE survey of college and university CIOs
finds that administrative and ERP systems, infrastructure and
security are the leading strategic concerns for 2007.
Those three issues were among the top 10 identified in all four
survey categories: most important to strategic success, potential to
become much more significant in the coming year, those taking most
of IT leadership time, and those getting the most in human and
dollar resources.
Four other issues showed up in three of the categories:
course/learning management, disaster recovery, IT funding and
identity/access management.
EDUCAUSE is a leading association of college and university IT
professionals. The 2007 Current Issues Survey Report is the eighth
by the group and this year drew responses from 587 senior IT
executives in higher education, mainly CIOs. The survey asks
respondents to rank their top 10 issues in the four categories
mentioned above. The study's authors list for each of the 10 issues,
a set of questions for IT leaders to consider.
Overall, the top 10 issues in all four categories stayed pretty
stable compared with 2006. Course/learning management, which is
based on commercial or open-source enterprise software, grew in
importance, as did electronic classrooms/technology buildings/common
facilities, which require considerable infrastructure investment in
wireless networks, physical layout design, and an array of
instructional technologies such as Web-based courses, digital
content and collaboration tools.
This year's survey split what had been one issue—security and
identity management—into two. Last year, the combined issue was the
number-one IT-related issue in strategic importance, edging out IT
funding, which had held the top position for three years in a row.
For 2007, IT funding was again the top issue in the strategic
importance category, with security second and identity/access
management fourth. But in terms of the amount of time devoted to it
by IT leaders, identity/access management ranked ninth, and didn't
appear at all in terms of the human/financial resources devoted to
it.
The disparity in the rankings reflects the high-profile damage to
institutions, and to their public image, caused by identity theft
and data breaches, of which there were a growing number in 2006. But
so far, identity and access management doesn't seem to be claiming a
disproportionate share of IT resources.
Source: Network World
Verisign Plugin Brings Green Address
Bars to Firefox
Verisign brings a new technology, used to identify
trusted Web sites, to the Firefox browser.
The Internet services vendor has released a Firefox plugin that will
show the same type of green address bar that is displayed by
Internet Explorer 7 when it lands on certain highly trusted Web
sites that use EV SSL (Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer)
certificates.
Companies like Verisign, Entrust, and Network Solutions have been
issuing these certificates since late 2006, but browser makers have
been slower to adopt them. They were adopted by Internet Explorer 7
in late January, and Firefox is expected to support the certificates
in Firefox 3.0, expected late this year.
The EV SSL certificates are essentially an antiphishing technology
designed to give Web surfers extra information and visual clues when
they are visiting secure Web sites, who’s URLs begin with "https://."
It's harder for a business to obtain an EV SSL certificate than it
is to acquire the ubiquitous SSL certificates currently used by most
secure Web sites.
Before companies like Verisign will issue an EV SSL certificate,
they take extra steps to make sure that it is going to a legitimate
organization. For example, they will make sure that the business in
question is registered with local authorities, has a real address,
and actually has control over the Web domain in question.
Verisign's Tim Callan says that more than 500 Web sites, including
sites run by eBay's PayPal division and ING Groep, have now
completed EV SSL certification. Nearly 90 percent of them are
certified by Verisign, said Callan, a director of product marketing
with the company's SSL group.
That's an important point because Verisign's Firefox plugin doesn't
identify sites that are certified by its competitors. Callan said it
would have been too much work to maintain a list of legitimate EV
SSL providers. "At that point, we're creating a whole new
simultaneous real-time checking system," he said. "We were willing
to invest in this one-off code development, but we didn't want to
inherit this legacy of constantly maintaining this service,
especially because this is a stop-gap measure. At the end of the
year, this will be built into Firefox proper."
Because of this limitation, Verisign isn't recommending that
nontechnical users download the plugin. It's for "technology early
adopters and the people who really want to be on the
state-of-the-art," Callan said. "For somebody who recognizes the
limitations of it and is still asking for it, this is a good
solution."
Source: IDG News Service
STUDIES
Websites Filtering Rises Worldwide,
Study Finds
The study predicts a rise in more subtle forms of filtering, such as
political Web sites made inaccessible during election periods.
Internet censorship is on the rise around the world, according to a
year-long global survey by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) to be
released at a conference in the Oxford, England, on Friday.
"Online censorship is growing in scale, scope, and sophistication
around the world," said John Palfrey, Executive Director of the
Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and a professor at Harvard
Law School, in a statement. "The regulation of the Internet has
continued to grow over time -- not surprising, given the importance
of the medium. As Internet censorship and surveillance grow, there's
reason to worry about the implications of these trends for human
rights, political activism, and economic development around the
world."
As if to prove that point, Google Korea said Thursday that it would
introduce an age-verification system later this year to block
adult-oriented searches for users 18 and under. The ONI study found
that "South Korea's filtering efforts are very narrow in scope, but
heavily censor one topic, North Korea."
The ONI is a partnership between universities in Cambridge, Harvard,
Oxford, and Toronto, and is funded by the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation.
The organization's study found that 25 out of 41 countries surveyed
showed evidence of Internet filtering. Unsurprisingly, countries
such as China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia filter a wide variety of
topics, as well as content related to those topics.
Burma, China, Iran, Syria, Tunisia, and Vietnam were found to engage
in politically motivated filtering. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia
were found to practice "substantial social content filtering."
Burma, China, Iran, Pakistan and South Korea were found to filter
Web sites associated with extremism and separatism for national
security reasons.
A number of countries showed no signs of official filtering:
Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, West Bank and Gaza, Malaysia,
Nepal, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Russia also appears to refrain from
government-directed filtering, though the survey results are
inconclusive because of the limited number of Moscow ISPs tested.
In a conference call, Rafal Rohozinski, a research fellow in the
Cambridge Security Programme and the director of Cambridge's
Advanced Network Research Group, described the study as "an
interesting model for how networked intelligence can gather
intelligence on networks" that was focused on "state-sponsored
filtering occurring at the backbone level."
"We found more filtering than we expected," said Rohozinski.
Filtering in the North America and Europe was not tested because the
filtering that occurs tends to be done at the behest of the private
sector.
"The bad news here is that very few countries seem to have a policy
mechanism where people can have a say [in what gets filtered]," said
Rohozinski. "The good news is that many countries still continue to
subscribe to an open Internet. This for us is encouraging that the
marketplace of ideas still seems to be favored over a regulatory
path."
Source:
InformationWeek
Beware P2P Networks with a Tunnel to
Confidential Data, Study Warns
Many of the biggest breaches in recent years were
inadvertent disclosures, Dartmouth business school researchers
found.
Peer-to-peer networks could be more than a nuisance in the
workplace; they might also be providing cyber thieves with a tunnel
into your most confidential data. So says a new study of corporate
data leaks released Tuesday by Dartmouth business school
researchers.
"Many of the biggest breaches in recent years were inadvertent
disclosures," says Eric Johnson, professor of operations management
at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and director of the school's
Glass Meyer/McNamee Center for Digital Strategies. Johnson
co-authored the study along with Scott Dynes, a senior research
fellow at Dartmouth's Institute for Security Technology Studies.
One of the major problems, they found, was that users were
insufficiently protecting their files and data from peer-to-peer
networks. "Like most people I talked to, I underestimated the scope
of the problem," Johnson told InformationWeek. "The kinds of leaks
coming out of these organizations would make their hair stand on
end, in terms of both the amount and type of information leaked."
The Dartmouth study notes that there are an estimated 10 million
users sharing music, video, software, and photos over peer-to-peer
networks, up from about 4 million in 2003. This doesn't even include
BitTorrent, a popular peer-to-peer application for video files
that's difficult to monitor. Meanwhile, efforts by ISPs,
corporations, and copyright holders to limit peer-to-peer through
technology (such as site blocking, traffic filtering, and content
poisoning) or through the courts (the most notable being the
Recording Industry Association of America prosecution of individual
users and file sharing firms) have prompted peer-to-peer developers
to create decentralized, encrypted, anonymous networks that can find
their way through corporate and residential firewalls.
"These networks are almost impossible to track, are designed to
accommodate large numbers of clients, and are capable of
transferring vast amounts of data," the study says.
And now the bad news is, criminals are actively searching
peer-to-peer networks for any personal information they can use to
commit identity theft. There are several ways for confidential data
to find its way to a peer network, including instances where users
accidentally share folders containing such data, users store music
and other data in the same folder that is shared, or users download
malware that exposes their file directories to the network. A lot of
identity theft victims "don't realize that their son was on LimeWire
last night sharing their financial information," Johnson says. "Much
of this software has interface designs that are confusing and even
deceptive in a way that gets people to share, without knowing it,
their whole hard drive."
Source:
InformationWeek
Get More from Outsourcing, essence of studies
Most of us fear outsourcing, and with reason: Our jobs are on the
line. Still, most of us work for organizations that will engage in
one or more outsourcing deals. Learning how to deal with the changes
outsourcing brings can actually work in our favor. Here are some
tips.
Work on the outsourcing relationship. Most companies put little time
or effort into these relationships, which soon become little more
than a battle over invoices, due dates and other contract-related
issues.
It's critical to treat the relationship formally, assigning specific
point personnel to handle it (even if at this point you have only a
small internal office of the CIO). This is especially critical when
most of the people on the "other side" are your own ex-colleagues.
You might like the "feel good" factor of seeing your former
colleagues continue to identify themselves as members of your team,
but beware.
Focus on the future. Most long-term sourcing transactions go through
at least one major contract renegotiation midstream. There's nothing
wrong with this—few of us are brilliant enough to anticipate 10 or
more years of changing needs. But if you're going to go through a
year's worth of renegotiation, why settle for a few minor tweaks in
the pricing algorithm and not much more?
It's not enough to enter into renegotiations focused on what has
changed about your company's IT needs since you engaged the sourcing
firm. Focus on change itself, the inevitable byproduct of passing
time. You'll see, for instance, that tying the sourcing partner's
resources to the configuration just makes it difficult for the
partner to make changes that could save power, servers and other
underlying costs. Another idea for renegotiation: Pay the sourcer a
bonus for cutting costs more than expected or consistently
delivering quality results.
Commit yourself. When you outsource a business process, do it
cleanly. Commitment can only come with trust, but it's important to
make up your mind that your objectives are indeed trust and
commitment.
By the end of 2008, more than US$120 billion in outsourcing deals
will be up for renewal. Many clients are in deeply unhappy
relationships, yet most will end up outsourcing again. Now is the
time to hone your ability to form partnerships. You'll be mastering
an in-demand skill.
Source: Computerworld
