Category: Product

In a shift from past practice, the world’s largest software manufacturer said it may charge consumers for future versions of the new protective technology, which Microsoft acquired by buying a small New York software firm.

Microsoft, whose Windows operating systems have often been criticized for lax security, traditionally has given consumers — at no charge — separate programs to improve security.

The company’s upcoming tool, available for its Windows XP and Windows 2000 software, will sweep for spyware and offer to remove suspicious programs.

Rival anti-spyware tools, such as Lavasoft Inc.’s popular “Ad-Aware” product, offer similar functions and many are free.

Microsoft’s disclosure that it may eventually charge extra for Windows protection reflects a recognition inside the company that it could collect significant profits by helping to protect its customers. Microsoft and some others, meanwhile, said blame should be directed instead at spyware manufacturers.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/12/16/microsoft.spyware.ap/index.html

The deal values Veritas at around $13.5 billion, they said.

By joining forces, Symantec will be able to help enterprise customers secure their information better, the companies said.

Symantec Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Thompson will continue in that role, while his opposite number at Veritas, Gary Bloom, will become vice-chairman and president of the combined company.

“This is not your typical merger focused on removing cost and redundant infrastructure,” he said. Bloom will take day-to-day responsibility for sales, service and support”, Thompson said.

For his part, Bloom said that a single company that can both secure its customers’ data, and make that data more available, represents a unique value proposition.

How long such integration will take is an unanswered question, as the people who will do the programming have been kept in the dark about the deal until now, according to Thompson.

The companies expect to report $5 billion in combined revenue in their first financial year together, from April 2005 to March 2006, according to Symantec’s Chief Financial Officer Greg Myers.

The previous week, it announced plans to acquire intrusion system Platform Logic of Glenwood, Maryland.

This latest deal dramatically extends and strengthens Symantec’s offering to enterprises, according to Richard Ptak, an analyst with Ptak, Noel & Associates, commenting on the deal via e-mail.

Veritas has so far failed to capitalize on its 2002 acquisitions of Jareva Technologies and Precise Software Solutions, but the deal with Symantec will give it a second chance to apply these technologies, drawing on the greater experience and financial resources of the merged company, Ptak said. Ptak wondered whether Computer Associates International or BMC Software would have been a better target.

BMC, in particular, would have given Symantec a solid position in the systems management market — and may still be a target if it is on the market by the time Symantec swallows Veritas.

http://itproductguidebeta.infoworld.com/article/04/12/16/HNsymantecbuyveritas_1.html

As the number of people using the devices increases, so they become more enticing targets for virus writers,” said Raimund Genes, President of EMEA Operations at Trend Micro. “By offering the first version of Trend Micro Mobile Security free of charge, Trend Micro wishes to provide its customers and their data-centric devices a secure holiday season.”

The software will protect mobile devices from new threats in “real time,” as malicious code attempts to install itself on mobile devices.

Despite the attention from antivirus companies, most experts agree that mobile phone viruses and worms are in their infancy. The first mobile phone worm, dubbed Cabir, appeared in June.

http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=447

The latest is a version for embedded devices running Windows XP Embedded.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1734101,00.asp
The embedded XP SP2 release includes many of the same security fixes and new features as Microsoft delivered in the full version of SP2.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1734130,00.asp?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535

The company announced a slew of enhancements to its Catalyst line of switches, including new Supervisor Engines for its Catalyst 6500 and 4500 switches, and several new capabilities across its product line. The new products and enhancements are designed to help customers more affordably extend security and resiliency across their entire network from the core all the way to access switches, where individual servers and desktops are connected.

“We’re offering features that people typically associate with more expensive core switches on less-expensive switches designed for the access layer,” said John McCool, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Gigabit switching unit.

For its Catalyst 6500 switch, Cisco is introducing the new Supervisor Engine 32, a switch engine that has 32 gigabits per second of forwarding capacity. The Supervisor 32 is based on technology found in the Supervisor Engine 720, which has 720gbps of forwarding capacity. Like its big brother, the Supervisor 32 provides security features, such as denial-of-service protection, in hardware. The new Supervisor 32 also offers 10-Gigabit Ethernet uplinks. One, which supports two ports of 10-Gigabit Ethernet, sells for $20,000. The other supports eight 1gbps Ethernet interfaces and has a list price of $15,000.

Cisco has also introduced a new Supervisor Engine for its Catalyst 4500, extending 10-Gigabit Ethernet uplinks further into the access network. The Supervisor Engine V-10GE offers either two 10gbps interfaces or four 1gbps Ethernet ports.

In addition to the new products, Cisco also introduced new features across its product line, which are designed to help ensure that its switches always remain up, a critical feature for IP telephony. Specifically, Cisco has added two new software features to its switches called Non-stop Forwarding and Stateful Switch Over. These enhancements enable sub-second failover so that voice calls won’t be dropped even if a failure occurs on the switch.

Cisco also extended its Power over Ethernet feature to a wider group of products, including the Catalyst 6500, 3750 and 3560.

And finally, the company has introduced the first gigabit Ethernet-enabled phone, the Cisco IP Phone 7971G-G.

Cisco has recently come under attack from a slew of competitors. Earlier this month, Hewlett-Packard introduced a new product that competes directly with Cisco’s 3750. Other competitors, such as 3Com, Dell and Enterasys Networks, have also introduced competing products.

Still, Cisco dominates the market with roughly 80 percent market share. The company hopes that adding new features and capabilities will help keep it ahead of the competition.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5470919.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnet

The Virus Throttler technology is designed to slow the propagation of a virus or worm within an infected server so that administrators have time to identify the infected system and take appropriate action, said Tony Redmond, vice president and chief technology officer of HP Services.

HP first discussed the technology at the RSA Security conference in February, but in August Redmond acknowledged that HP was having difficulty making the technology work with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Server software.

Any administrator who has had to disinfect a bank of afflicted PCs or servers knows how quickly viruses can spread, Redmond said.

HP’s virus-throttling technology will help contain the spread of those viruses or worms by slowing the rate at which they multiply within a network, Redmond explained.

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/virus/story/0,10801,97940,00.html