3 Criticals and 1 Important
Category: News
Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 goes gold
Scheduled to be available by the end of 2003, Microsoft Virtual PC offers customers a cost-effective safety net to ease their migration to Microsoft Windows XP Professional and a tool to help accelerate the development, testing, deployment and support of PC applications.
Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 allows enterprise customers to run multiple operating systems on one PC, so employees can run critical legacy applications on an interim basis while information technology (IT) professionals proceed with the migration to Windows XP Professional.
Key features carried over from the former Connectix product include Virtual Machine Additions, which provides a high level of integration between host and guest operating systems, including integrated mouse, time synchronization, cut-and-paste, drag-and-drop, and folder sharing; Undo Disks, which allows users to delete any changes they make to the virtual hard disk during a session; and Differencing Disks, which lets multiple users and multiple virtual machines use the same parent virtual hard disk at the same time.
This extensive compatibility positions customers to migrate legacy applications and consolidate desktops for dramatic cost savings.
More info: [url=http://news.designtechnica.com/article1811.html]http://news.designtechnica.com/article1811.html[/url]
Dell integrates with Microsoft management tools
In customer surveys, Dell has found that “patching and upgrading systems is the most important thing they (IT managers) can do at this time for security reasons and to keep their systems up to date,” Hand added.
The Management and Update packages are available now; the Deployment Toolkit will arrive by the end of the year.
More info: [url=http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5105647.html]http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5105647.html[/url]
Security execs form advisory group
Called the Global Council of CSOs, the group will bring together chief security officers from nine companies and one government agency.
The Council will offer advice, publish security recommendations, work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and help ensure that corporate America is ready to respond to Internet attacks, according to sources who asked not to be named.
The sole initial government representative will be Will Pelgrin, the director of cybersecurity and critical infrastructure for New York state.
More info: [url=http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5105962.html ]http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5105962.html[/url]
US-listed firms may face IT security audits
The audit must be conducted by an independent party and assess “the risk and magnitude of the harm that could result from the unauthorised access,” alteration or destruction of company computers, says the draft, prepared by Representative Adam Putnam.
“Given the magnitude of the threat and the depth of the vulnerabilities that exist today, it is imperative that we address this matter aggressively and collaboratively in order to enhance the protection of the nation’s information networks on behalf of the American people and the US economy,” Putnam said in a statement this week.
Miller said the final recommendation could include legislative, regulatory or self-regulatory approaches.
More info: [url=http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39117721,00.htm]http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39117721,00.htm[/url]
Hackers in attack on Scottish credit card firm
WorldPay, which is part of Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Group, said it had been bombarded with millions of bogus e-mails in the past couple of days, which had left the firm struggling to deal with genuine payments.
The bulk of its clients are located in the UK and mainland Europe, and payment requests from websites are normally sent in via e-mail.
The firm said a massive number of messages from elsewhere had come in to the same address over a 24-hour period.
As a result, transaction requests have either crashed or been slowed down.
However, it appears those behind the e-mails – which originate in the Ukraine – have set out to disrupt business rather than attempt to commit fraud.
At the start of this year, Visa and Mastercard admitted a hacker had gained access to more than five million credit card accounts.
More recently, net provider PSINet and security firm PanSec International said an unprotected website they set up as part of a study was attacked about 2000 times a week over a two-month period.
More info: [url=http://www.edinburghnews.com/business.cfm?id=1224512003]http://www.edinburghnews.com/business.cfm?id=1224512003[/url]