IT Services News | October, 2009

The United States is well behind the curve in the fight against computer criminals, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Friday, as Homeland Security officials opened a $9 million operations center to better coordinate IT security.
Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said legislation being drafted by his committee will require federal agencies and private IT companies to set up a system to share information on cyber...

IBM is sinking its teeth deeper into government IT today with a new software framework that joins the company’s expansive middleware portfolio into a neat package for The Man 2.0.
The new IBM Government Industry Framework is designed for government citizen IT services – a market that covers nearly everything fed except IT security and intelligence. (IBM already provides a military-grade software platform that it’s keeping separate for a variety of control...

Some IT security firms have lifted on the wings of government spending lately, as the feds seek to boost cybersecurity against worsening threats.
"Growth in government is outpacing enterprise and consumer right now — absolutely — relative to Internet security IT companies," said Pacific Crest analyst Rob Owens.

Businesses face some of the same threats as the feds, but they’ve battened down their budgets in the recession. And the latest earnings from security leaders and fast-rising...

Hackers are exploiting internet users searching for Halloween-related content on the web, says Panda Security. Research by the IT security vendor revealed that hundreds of websites designed to distribute fake antivirus software, are coming up top in results offered by some the web’s most popular search engines.
Fake antivirus software, which is also known as scareware, encourages web users to part with their hard-earned cash to download hoax security software that serves...

Microsoft’s Office Accounting software, used to challenge Sage and Intuit, has become the latest victim of corporate cuts.
The package will no longer be distributed after November 16, the IT company said Friday. Versions of the IT product affected are the Express, Standard, Professional, Professional Plus, three-user and Small Business Accounting in North America and the UK.

The decision to cut Office Accounting and have people use existing features in Office and Dynamics is...

Social networking website Facebook was awarded $711.2 million in damages relating to an anti-spam case against Internet marketer Sanford Wallace, court documents show.
Wallace did not oppose the motion or appear at the hearing on September 18, 2009, according to a filing on Thursday in a San Jose, California federal court.

The site filed an anti-spamming case against Wallace in February for accessing people’s Facebook accounts without their permission and sending phony mail and...

RealNetworks has pulled itself back into profitability, with the IT company behind RealPlayer back in the black, and it looking for a new tie-in with Google.
Although the $1.5 million profit will not be setting the stock exchange ablaze, it represents a significant improvement on the $4.5 million loss at the same stage last year.

RealNetworks is looking to continue its positive movement into new markets – such as an iPhone app...

ICANN has agreed to allow the use of non-Latin scripts to be used as web addresses, bringing the biggest overhaul of the internet since its inception, according to experts.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which approved the change at a meeting in Seoul, claims the move could lead to a dramatic rise in the number of broadband connection users.

It’s estimated that over half of the 1.6 billion people who...