Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
ie8 fix

data

FAA reports breach that puts employee data at risk

A server at the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration was illegally accessed online and personal identity information of employees was stolen, the agency said.

Two of the nearly 50 files on the breached computer had personal data about more than 45,000 FAA employees and retirees who were on the FAA rolls as of three years ago, the FAA said in a statement released on Monday.

The server that was breached was not connected to the air traffic control system or other operational systems, according to the statement.

The agency is notifying all affected employees by mail and is investigating … Read more

Facebook steps into OpenID Foundation

Facebook has joined the board of the OpenID Foundation and will host an OpenID Design Summit later this month, according to a post on the social network's developer blog.

This is a bit of a surprise because Facebook has developed its own universal log-in standard, Facebook Connect, which theoretically competes with the nonprofit OpenID standard. It should be noted that Facebook has not yet announced any official plans to make the two compatible, and that just joining the board and hosting an event might not quell the criticism from open-source advocates who say Facebook is still too proprietary in … Read more

Data breach incidents are increasing, study shows

My official title may be "analyst," but market research is the part of my job that appeals to the geek in me. Good thing I work at ESG, where we do market research around information assurance all the time.

Given an IT security landscape highlighted by regulatory compliance, publicly-disclosed data breaches, and increasingly sophisticated threats, we often ask survey respondents whether their organization suffered a data breach in the last 12 months. ESG has probably asked this very question in several research projects over the past few years. In the past, about 30 percent of large organizations (i.… Read more

Green Grid pitches new IT energy standard

The Green Grid, a group of IT industry leaders including heavyweights like AMD and Hewlett-Packard, unveiled a new standard for measuring data center efficiency at the second annual Green Grid Technical Forum in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday.

The white papers released by the consortium have been advising companies on how to properly measure, quantify, analyze and report on PUE (power usage effectiveness) and DCiE (data center infrastructure efficiency) since 2007.

"At the 2009 Technical Forum, attendees will walk away with actionable information to help measure energy consumption and significantly improve energy cost savings," Larry Vertal, director of … Read more

Why open-source licensing still matters

The Open Knowledge Foundation blog provides some excellent reasons to take open-source licenses seriously, especially for data on the Web, but these struck me hardest:

Together, a definition of openness, plus a set of conformant licenses, deliver clarity and simplicity. Not only is interoperability ensured, but people can know at a glance, and without having to go through a whole lot of legalese, what they are free to do...Thus, licensing and definitions are important, even though they are only a small part of the overall picture.

If we get them wrong, they will keep on getting in the way … Read more

Data breaches cost $6.6 million on average, survey finds

It costs $6.6 million on average when an organization suffers a data breach, and more than $200 per compromised record, according to a survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute that's due to be released on Monday.

The report, sponsored by PGP Corp., examined the costs incurred by 43 organizations that experienced a data breach. Breaches ranged as high as 113,000 records and the average total cost per company ranged from more than $613,000 per breach to nearly $32 million.

Most of the cost is due to lost business, which averaged nearly $4.6 million, the report … Read more

Mark Zuckerberg's sentiment engine?

It's sort of cute, really: blogger Robert Scoble went on a nice snowy stroll with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg while the two were in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. Of course, he wrote about it.

Most of what Scoble wrote about his conversation with the young CEO is either information that was out there already or tidbits like the fact that Zuckerberg was teaming up with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to work the coat check at the World Economic Forum's annual Women's Dinner (aww!), but there was one fairly interesting part: apparently, Facebook … Read more

Facebook Connect syncs up with iPhoto

Now, this is kind of neat: Facebook Connect, the sprawling social network's universal-login project, has started to come to desktop software. Namely, it's been hooked up to the Apple photo-management software iPhoto, per a post on the company developer blog.

"We are excited that sharing your photos with the people you care about has become even easier with iLife '09, Apple's new suite of applications that includes iPhoto '09," the post by Facebook platform manager Dave Morin said. "Users of iPhoto '09 can easily share and tag photos from iPhoto directly to Facebook. With … Read more