Web Headlines

Headlines from around the Web for Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008
Compiled by Melanie Bender

Emergency Alert System Uses Cellphones in Specific Areas

The Washington Post

An agreement with a Reston start-up called SquareLoop may bring localities a step closer to sending emergency alerts via cellphones. Through a partnership with Sprint Nextel scheduled to be announced today, SquareLoop will send location-based text messages to cellphones throughout the area in the event of an emergency.

Symantec: Gov't Needs to Take New Cybersecurity Steps

InfoWorld

The government sector, including state and local governments, accounted for 26 percent of data breaches that could lead to identity theft in the first half of 2007, according to Symantec's latest Government Internet Security Threat Report.

E-discovery Rules Still Causing IT Headaches

ComputerWorld

Many IT shops have spent months working to refit corporate systems so they comply with year-old changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, even as some executives say the revisions aren’t clearly defined. However, some IT executives who complained about the rules acknowledged that the FRCP modifications have forced them to make positive changes to corporate data-retention policies.

Author Argues IT Department is Dead

NetworkWorld

The IT department is dead, and it is a shift to utility computing that will kill this corporate career path. So predicts Nicholas Carr in his new book, "The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google."

IT Executives’ Compensation Up in 2008

NetworkWorld

CIOs and IT executives saw the biggest increase in compensation in the past 12 months, according to recent study data that shows large enterprise companies in particular are willing to pay for top talent.

Data Center Robbery Leads to New Thinking on Security

ComputerWorld

An armed robbery at a Chicago data center has changed how its CEO views security. Christopher Faulkner, CEO of C I Host Inc. said he no longer thinks data centers are as secure as IT managers believe they are, and that he sees what happened at his company as a warning of what may lie ahead for other organizations.

70,000 Web Pages Hacked By Database Attack

InformationWeek

Web sites that naively call for user input, then fail to put strict checks on what that input may be, are susceptible to SQL injection attacks. That vulnerability appears to be the cause of up to 70,000 Web pages getting hacked by malicious code between Dec. 28 and Jan. 5.

Government E-mail: Delete at Your Own Risk

Governing.com

Though other state offices were quick to disassociate themselves from Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt's office after its free-for-all e-mail deletion process came to light, very few government organizations have actual systems for managing the e-mail they receive.

ODNI Issues New Metadata Standards

Government Computer News

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued three new metadata standards to improve and simplify the marking and handling of information. These standards are a part of a broader attempt to make information more usable across the intelligence community.

Arkansas, Like the U.S., Aims for Smoother Absentee Voting

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Steps are being taken to utilize electronics to help make sure that Arkansans abroad get to vote in Arkansas elections, though the system may not all be in place for the Feb. 5 presidential primary, or even the party primaries in May.

Server Problem Halts Issue of Driver's Licenses, IDs

Dayton Daily News

If you're planning to get a driver's license or state ID card, call your local Bureau of Motor Vehicles Deputy Registrar Agency before heading to that location. That was the advice Monday from the BMV after a computer server problem made it impossible to process applications.