As I’ve been on holiday this last week – enjoying Newcastle’s winter sunshine, but not the underwhelming performances on the football pitch– I couldn’t possibly comment with any authority on all the recent IT news I haven’t been covering: Websense snapping up another security firm, perhaps, or yet more seasonal research and 2007 prediction press releases.

As you probably know by now, I have mixed feelings about survey-based stories; sometimes they can provide fascinating, no, interesting insights into IT trends, but they can also be full of self-serving, spurious tosh. Well, I have come up with my own IT research – survey size two – which suggests that the internet still has some way to go before it is truly to impact the lives of all citizens, or stakeholders if you like your New Labour bo*****s. When questioned, a staggering 100 percent of respondents said they would be buying a PC or laptop “sometime soon”, and explained they were keen to use the internet to book holidays and keep in touch with relatives via email “because they never call any more”. But, rather irrationally, they said online banking was still too unsafe to do on the internet. Well, there’s no convincing some people.

December 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

That’s it; the final issue of 2006 is safely tucked up in bed, and as the editorial team of IT Week drag themselves over the finishing line, the time has come once again to make some predictions for the year ahead. My first is a somewhat disturbing piece of news; it seems that over the course of this week, certain members of the team, let’s say, senior members who should frankly know better, have hatched a plot to destroy the good reputation of this magazine.

It was decided during the final podcast of this year that we should record the Lou Reed/David Bowie classic Perfect Day, recently cringingly covered in a BBC advert. Now it may drive traffic to the web site and create a “buzz”, but to be perfectly honest, I think most of us were hired for our journalistic skills or tecchie know-how, not our singing voices. And for “buzz” you could probably substitute “humiliation on a never-before seen scale”. However, we are as ever your humble servants, so if there are any requests, you know where the comments box is…

More mundanely, as 2007 approaches, it seems there is compliance trouble at mill for many enterprises, who are struggling to meet increasingly stringent demands without the appropriately skilled security staff. More demand for key skills in this area and The Training Camp has already predicted it sees security as a top training priority for next year, displacing software development.

December 15, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now we don't go in for outrageously irresponsible headline-grabbing stories much at IT Week, more's the pity, but this week's cover lead is a little something that sprung out of the latest McAfee Virtual Criminology Report. And it's dark. Written with co-operation from various computer crime-fighting agencies across the globe, the report highlights that organised crime is recruiting from IT courses at universities and specialist schools, tempting students and graduates with lucrative salaries to write malware and engage in other nefarious activities.

Which is all very reminiscent of KGB recruiting tactics apparently, I mean, like in the good old days, when spies were spies, before people started messing around with radioactive material and the like. It might all sound a bit far-fetched, and the cynical would suggest it is in the interests of security vendors to create a climate of fear and uncertainty in which their solutions seem to provide some kind of reassurance.

Trend Micro's CTOs made similar remarks as McAfee last week, calling on educational establishments to teach more about ethics, which is a nice idea but I wonder how much that will really influence those IT students who get involved in cyber crime. I mean, computer science graduates might be many things, but surely they're not so completely unaware of their social, legal and cultural surroundings that they need someone to teach them it? Well, on the other hand...

December 11, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now we don't go in for outrageously irresponsible headline-grabbing stories much at IT Week, more's the pity, but this week's cover lead is a little something that sprung out of the latest Virtual Criminology Report. And it’s dark. Written with co-operation from various computer crime-fighting agencies across the globe, the report highlights that organised crime is recruiting from IT courses at universities and specialist schools, tempting students and graduates with lucrative salaries to write malware and engage in other nefarious activities.McAfee

Which is all very reminiscent of KGB recruiting tactics apparently, I mean, like in the good old days, when spies were spies, before people started messing around with radioactive material and the like. It might all sound a bit far-fetched, and the cynical would suggest it is in the interests of security vendors to create a climate of fear and uncertainty in which their solutions seem to provide some kind of reassurance.

Trend Micro's CTOs made similar remarks as McAfee last week, calling on educational establishments to teach more about ethics, which is a nice idea but I wonder how much that will really influence those IT students who get involved in cyber crime. I mean, computer science graduates might be many things, but surely they're not so completely unaware of their social, legal and cultural surroundings that they need someone to teach them it? Well, on the other hand...

December 11, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

…And monumental hangovers, and having no money, and bloody Christmas shopping, but that's another story. Just about every vendor in the security space is making their bold predictions for the threat landscape of 2007 at the moment. And to be honest, none of it is exactly revolutionary stuff – "more of the same" is the general message I've got from talking to McAfee, MessageLabs, Trend Micro, Postini and others in the last few days. Spam is likely to move onto your CEOs radar once again as increasing bot numbers cause more problems, IE7 adware problems will abound, instant messaging could become an attractive target as more interoperability between proprietary systems occurs. You know the drill.

At a meeting with Trend's three CTOs – they just have to do everything bigger and better don't they – the thorny subject of ISPs responsibility for cutting spam again came up. Dave Rand, Trend's CTO for content security, seemed to think that most US ISPs are doing more to solve the problem than their European counterparts, having taken AOL's lead and put in place content filtering and Port 25 blocking. Others disagreed though and it's probably fair enough to say they could all do with doing a bit more – it certainly is judging by my Yahoo inbox, which is now getting around 40 messages a day.

December 6, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)

After two hard years pounding the IT party circuit, I'm delighted to report that all the migraine-blighted Friday mornings and the liver damage has finally paid off. Last week I was the proud recipient of a Lenovo laptop and it's a beauty, well, it's beautifully wrapped. The only problem for me at the moment is getting back home with it on the bus without: a) being mugged; b) dropping it as a tracksuited citizen of Walworth drives her pram into my shins; c) both of the above. And for the record, I had no more business cards in the raffle draw than anyone else that night, honest.

December 4, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)