Memo to Congress:  Don't Mess With the Internet ; Telecom Giants Want to Create  a "Pay to Play" 'Net Landscape. `
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As congressional leaders desperately strive for some accomplishment to brandish before voters during campaign season, they would be wise to remember the Hippocratic oath:  First, do no harm.
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com September 29, 2004, 9:34 AM PT. There&#39;s no doubt the Internet will continue to make its mark in the world of business and technology.
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(InfoWorld) - Enterprise companies will soon begin offloading many of their network security responsibilities to telecommunications and Internet service providers and save vast amounts of time and money doing so, if AT&T has its way. Speaking to the assembled crowd at the IDC Security Forum in New York on Wednesday, Edward Amoroso, chief security officer for AT&T's services division, predicted that enterprises will begin adopting more "virtual" security capabilities from their ISPs and bandwidth providers in the coming years as those companies are better positioned to do battle with botnets, spam, and denial-of-service )DoS) threats. Based on the bandwidth-providers' existing abilities to see spikes in traffic that are tell-tale signs of botnet, spam, or other malware activity -- long before enterprises can see evidence of the attacks on their own -- Amoroso contends that companies will soon concede the process of fighting the threats and turn to companies such as AT&T for help. "We think that security at the perimeter should be virtual, which is a somewhat controversial concept, because a lot of time, effort, and career capital has already been spent securing the perimeter," Amoroso said. "But we think a lot of existing technologies there are running out of legs, and simply running firewalls at the gateway is no longer a valuable proposition." The United States government's Telecommunications act of 1996 prevents carriers from approaching customers and marketing services to them based on any trends they observe on the end users' network connections. However, the companies can already identify much of the spam and malware activity being carried out in the pipe, based on their massive infrastructure, and should be enlisted to help solve security issues, he said. For threats such as distributed DoS that can easily be thwarted upstream, the CIO said, it makes little sense for companies to continue to invest in new technologies and staff when the carriers could easily detect and snuff out the campaigns ahead of time. "How do you stop DDoS at the edge? The physics just don't make sense. When these attacks happen, the customers' routers will already be dead," said Amoroso. "We think the idea that the pipe should be dumb is strange; with spam accounting for 90 percent of all traffic on the e-mail pipe, we're delivering nothing but more attacks, malware, and junk. If people want us to keep doing that we can, but why would they want us to keep doing that when we can see it, scoop it, study it, and stop it?" Lest someone should contend that AT&T and other carriers are merely licking their chops at the prospect of adding pricey new security services to their products, the expert said security services should eventually become a set of non-optional capabilities included with the purchase of ISP and telephony services. Much as the carrier community focused on providing faster services in the 1980s and added tools to improve quality to their products in the 1990s, the CIO said that security services will become a de facto element of all the capabilities that the firms market. While early adopters are already paying a premium to use the security capabilities offered by carriers today, eventually the price should be blended into the packages of capabilities that companies buy from providers such as AT&T, the expert predicted. At the same time, AT&T and other carriers would have to sacrifice their existing businesses of selling firewall management and intrusion detection-type systems into enterprises, he said. But the move to push security tools to the bandwidth providers is one that has been made even more likely by the complexity of those technologies. "I think we'll come out of this decade thinking it was silly to have separate perimeter security systems, it doesn't make sense to build the network and overlay security as an afterthought," Amoroso said. "We have as large of a managed security services business as anyone, but this work is better off embedded in the pipeline." Emerging mobile and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services will also include integrated security capabilities that replace many of the systems being implemented to protect those technologies today, according to the AT&T CIO. "We can virtualize these things, and any carrier can do it; this is the direction that perimeter security is headed in. It's not a collision course, but rather something very pleasant, as finally there's something smooth and simple to solve these problems," he said. "It's absurd that all we hear today is that the carrier plays no role in all of this, that companies should do it at the edge. We know it's a lot of work, but we're already prepared to do it."
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com October 7, 2004, 12:45 PM PT. There&#39;s no doubt the Internet will continue to make its mark in the world of business and technology.
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Competition may not fix problems with broadband speed and cost in the United States, because of the high cost of entry into the market, the leader of a technology think tank said Friday.Many policymakers in Washington, D.C., call for competition to cure issues with broadband value and build-out, but they don&#39;t recognize that the cost of building out competing networks may make broadband a natural monopoly or duopoly, said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).&quot;It&#39;s a mistake for policymakers to assume that if they simply &#39;push the competition lever,&#39; all the problems with broadband policy will be solved,&quot; wrote Atkinson, in an ITIF paper. &quot;The bottom line is that if policymakers want to maximize not only societal welfare but also consumer welfare, they must balance the push for more competition with the need to maintain and create an efficient broadband industry structure.&quot;Atkinson and some other speakers at an ITIF broadband policy forum argued that the United States may need more broadband regulations to achieve higher speeds and lower prices. Atkinson suggested a balance between competition and regulations that would mandate open pipes and create stronger enforcement of consumer protection and antitrust laws.Not everyone agreed that more regulation was appropriate. The suggestion that broadband is a natural monopoly or duopoly &quot;as an economist gives me the willies,&quot; said John Mayo, professor of economics, business and public policy at Georgetown University.A government-supported monopoly in the traditional telephone market didn&#39;t work, Mayo said. He recalled an old Bell Atlantic billboard saying something to the effect of, &quot;We don&#39;t sell you what you think you want; we sell you what we know you need.&quot;Broadband is still a relatively new technology and the broadband business model is still evolving, Mayo said. The industry doesn&#39;t need government regulation while it&#39;s still developing.Other speakers complained that U.S. residents get&#160;lower speeds&#160;for&#160;higher prices&#160;than many residents of Europe and the Far East. But Mayo noted that prices have been falling. &quot;No matter how you measure it ... it&#39;s more affordable today than it&#39;s ever been,&quot; he said.Speakers at the forum noted that broadband policy is becoming an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. This month, Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, outlined a broadband policy that would include tax incentives for broadband carriers to move into rural and other underserved areas. Clinton also called for public and private partnerships to help roll out broadband and for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to develop better data about where broadband is available.Several other candidates have talked about broadband as well, including Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani, noted Jonathan Sallet, a partner in the Washington communications firm, the Glover Park Group.But many policymakers in Washington have recently taken a hands-off approach to broadband, thinking &quot;let&#39;s create a neutral platform and just let stuff happen,&quot; added Steven Weber, a professor of political science at the University of California Berkeley. But just letting stuff happen isn&#39;t working to push broadband in many sectors, including health care, he said.&quot;I don&#39;t think that argument is completely adequate to most people,&quot; he said.
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roundup Plus: Groups push on for TV on cell phones...Shopping.com holders cut IPO shares...Transmeta starts new chip, warns on earnings.
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com September 28, 2004, 9:54 AM PT. There&#39;s no doubt the Internet will continue to make its mark in the world of business and technology.
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roundup Plus: Open-source rival to Exchange released...Verizon sets up home in Circuit City...3i's Gagen resigns...Unify updates Java tool.
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Plus: Toshiba earnings dip, chip outlook dims...Verizon boosted by wireless, fiber...Nintendo outlook positive.
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A Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday proposed legislation to stop network providers from playing traffic cop on the Internet.
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Plus: Time Warner net income slips...Cell phone unit shores up Verizon...Gateway trims loss in third quarter...EDS delays earnings.
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roundup Plus: T-Mobile adds security measure to hot spots...Slashdot dips into politics...IBM releases low-cost Unix servers.
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Rep. Mary Bono Mack says Congress shouldn't get in the way of Internet service providers that want to detect illegal sharing of copyrighted material.
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Plus: Cisco profit climbs...Time Warner lowers earnings target...Electronic Arts lowers outlook, shares fall...Sony profit up, forecast cautious.
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roundup Plus: Cisco CEO's salary shoots up from $1...SanDisk ups capacity on flash memory cards...Google tests Froogle in U.K.
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com September 23, 2004, 9:53 AM PT. There&#39;s no doubt the Internet will continue to make its mark in the world of business and technology.
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Another of the Net's founding wizards weighed in on the Net neutrality debate this week, as Tim Berners-Lee advocated that Congress protect Net neutrality and questioned the value of digital rights management tech.