Ellison: Data Hubs Could&#39;ve Prevented 9/11
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is convinced that had the intelligence community used a unified database from Oracle, the terrorist attacks on 9/11 would never have happened.
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PRAGUE -- Add one more country to the list of those decrying intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks.
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(InfoWorld) - In just three years, the bytes of data generated by digital cameras, mobile phones, businesses IT systems, and devices will equal the number of grains of sand on the world's beaches. It's a mind-boggling estimation from market analysis company IDC. But it reflects the proliferation of devices and systems used by consumers and businesses, said Stephen Minton, IDC's vice president of worldwide IT markets and strategies, during a briefing on Thursday. Over the next few years, corporations will face tough decisions on how to store data, find information and comply with regulations, said Minton, who laid out a forecast of what IT managers can expect from what's being labeled the "information explosion." It won't be an easy task. While 85 percent of that data is predicted to come from consumers snapping photos, surfing Web pages, and sending e-mail, about 60 percent of that consumer data will still cross corporate networks, Minton said. Much of the data is unstructured, meaning it's not clearly labeled as to its content, such as photos, video, and perhaps phone recordings, which makes it more difficult to use. But technologies that enable deep analysis of the data are emerging, and could help business unlock what's important and improve their operations. The mass of data companies are collecting -- the retailer Wal-Mart Stores, for example, generates 1TB of transactional data a day -- represents huge business opportunities "if companies can really get to a point where they can successfully analyze the data going back and forth on their network," Minton said. Companies are "still a long way short of being able to analyze the unstructured data on their networks," he said. The data is coming from Web services such as the photo-sharing site Flickr, Skype, and even the virtual world Second Life. The business opportunities are the positive side. But the security concerns still abound, as well as regulatory compliance and liability worries. According to data from the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team, the number of reported software vulnerabilties declined in 2003 and 2004 but surged in 2005 to around 6,000, an all-time high. "This explosion in the number of applications and devices has created an explosion in the number of security vulnerabilities," Minton said. The security and reliability of those IT systems has become so important that the IT department now has "a direct impact on the company's top and bottom line," Minton said. Customer experiences and the company'sÂ image are at stake when security fails, he said. Accordingly,Â security has remained the top budget priorityÂ over the last five or six years, with 60 percent of companies placing it as the highest one in an IDC survey conducted earlier this year. IDC is predicting that revenue from security and vulnerability management software products will grow by 20 percent this year over 2006, to $2.27 billion. That far outpaces the 6 percent to 7 percent growth expected for the software industry as a whole. When a report of a data breach hits the front page that "has a very bad impact on a company's brand image," Minton said.
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LEXINGTON -- Michael Y. Lu and Jonathan Morrone, two Boston area businessmen, planned a meeting at the World Trade Center in New York on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. But Morrone had a last-minute scheduling change, and they both missed the appointment.
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Post Sept. 11 cyberterrorism predictions haven't materialized. But U.S. power plants, trains and oil pipelines are nonetheless more vulnerable than ever before.
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(InfoWorld) - SAN FRANCISCO -- U.S. companies and the federal government need to step up and fix the problems in their computer networks, the nation's new cybersecurity czar told attendees during his first-ever address atÂ RSA ConferenceÂ here on Thursday. Within the next 10 years, the majority of the world's communication needs will probably be handled by the Internet, said Gregory Garcia, the assistant secretary for cybersecurity and telecommunications at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). "This proliferation of applications and devices within the converged network is going to create a breeding ground for security problems," he said. "Our networks and our systems are vulnerable and they are exposed." Garcia outlined two priorities for the year ahead. First, his office is working with federal agencies to adopt common security policies and practices. Second, he plans to work with the private sector to push forward a process called the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. This effort is intended to evaluate computer security risks on an industry-by-industry basis and outline the steps that need to be taken to address them. The broad strokes of this plan were outlined last June, and the DHS is now working with industry to flesh out sector-specific plans, Garcia said. He made it clear that the DHS expects U.S. companies to participate. "There are a lot of plans in Washington. This one is going to stick," he said. "The private sector owns and operates 90 percent of the critical infrastructure, and it's up to you all, not just the DHS, to secure this infrastructure." Companies looking for best practices already have a number of standards they can consider, Garcia said, pointing to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 17799 specification and the guidelines prescribed by Technet, an IT industry association. Computer security has not been a top priority at the DHS, which has paid far more attention to physical security threats to the nation since its inception in 2003. And though DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff tried to put a sharper focus on computer security by creating Garcia's high-level post in 2005, the position remained vacant for more than a year. Garcia was introduced Thursday by Art Coviello, president of EMC's RSA group, who said afterward that he was encouraged by the assistant secretary's speech. "It's a combination of carrot and stick," he said in an interview. "Chiding industry to actually comply with these standards that are out there, and a veiled threat of regulation to get things done." Coviello said that cybersecurity has "languished a bit" within DHS ever since U.S. President George W. Bush signed off on his administration's comprehensive cybersecurity plan in 2003. "The Department and Secretary [Tom] Ridge and Secretary Chertoff obviously focused on the right things -- physical threats -- but now it's time to get after the critical infrastructure from the cyber side," Coviello said in the interview. "I don't think industry is looking for a lot of regulation from government," he added. "What they are looking for is leadership."
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This week, the biggest market declines since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S. caused a crisis of confidence in sectors including technology, leading IT investors to reassess what's in store for the year.
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Three years after the attacks of Sept.  11, 2001, is today's business traveler safer?
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NEW YORK, Sept. 18 -- The chairman of the agency that owned the World Trade Center defended his decision not to ask employees to move into the proposed Freedom Tower at Ground Zero because of the attacks on the twin towers.
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com September 20, 2004, 2:46 PM PT. Most IT Managers won&#39;t question the importance of security, but this priority has been sliding between the third and fourth most important focus for companies.
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Security experts contend that a growing number of operators of compromised computer networks (or "botnets") are finding new ways to grow their networks and make them immune to potential shutdowns, including sophisticated fault-tolerance planning to help ensure that their networks can't be easily wiped out.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Relying on people to show up at a specific data center by a certain time to execute a recovery plan in the middle of a crisis reveals a certain lack of foresight. Consider an alternative -- keeping the lights on.
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(InfoWorld) - Many of the security measures put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York are doing more harm than good, said two speakers scheduled to present at the Hack In The Box Security Conference (HITB) this week. The effect of many security measures put in place by governments after Sept. 11 has been to strengthen control over their citizens and erode democratic freedoms, said Roberto Preatoni, a security consultant who works in Italy. "The Internet allows you to do more effective things regarding controlling the population," he said. "Before, we were just being spied on," said Fabio Ghioni, vice president and security CTO of Telecom Italia. Now, governments are using psychological operations and technology to prey upon their citizens' fears and extend their own power, he said. "Technology makes it easier for us to be brainwashed, make us accept less and less freedom," Ghioni said. In some cases, the technology measures put in place by governments may put citizens at greater risk of attack from terrorists, Preatoni said. As an example, he cited a recent demonstration of how an RFID (radio-frequency identification) passport system being proposed by the U.S. State Department could be used by terrorists to construct a bomb designed to target U.S. citizens. In that demonstration, Flexilis, of Los Angeles, showed how an RFID passport that was left slightly open could be used to trigger a bomb equipped with an RFID reader. Flexilis proposed modifications to the design of the RFID passport that prevent this from happening. A video of the demonstration can beÂ viewed online here. Faced with the fear of terrorist attacks, the U.S. and Europe have been quick to give up freedoms in exchange for promises of protection from their governments, Ghioni said. In some cases, such as the U.S. Patriot Act, the provisions and implications of these protective measures are not adequately explained by governments or understood by their citizens, he said. Ghioni also questioned the scale of measures taken in recent years to respond to terrorism, noting that Europe has long faced the threat of attacks from groups such as the Red Brigade and the Irish Republican Army. "Look at the statistics. How many people in the West died of terrorism? How many people die from car accidents," he asked. HITB, in Kuala Lumpur, runs through Thursday, Sept. 21.
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(InfoWorld) - The Department of Homeland Securityâs Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) raised a few eyebrows in late November when it sent a warning out to U.S. banks and financial institutions about a possible cyber attack by Islamic militants. The alert, dated Nov. 30, was triggered by a posting on what the DHS considered an Islamic jihadi Web site calling for hackers to attack U.S. financial and banking Web sites, apparently to protest the detention of Muslims at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. However, the warning was heavily qualified, with DHS calling the threat âmore aspirational than operational.â Financial firms downplayed the danger, too. One security executive at a major brokerage told InfoWorld that the warning was a ânon-event.â But could repeated warnings about such non-events eventually make critical infrastructure owners deaf to DHSâs warnings? InfoWorld Senior Editor Paul F. Roberts recently chatted with John Carlson, senior director of security and risk Assessment at BITS, a financial-services industry consortium focused on security, fraud, and risk management, about the DHS warning and state of the public-private partnership on cybersecurity. InfoWorld: Iâm guessing that your members received the US-CERT warning about the cyber terrorist attack? John Carlson: There were two messages sent: the first was [Nov. 30]; then a second revision came out [Dec. 1]. The gist of it was that these reports were not corroborated. IW: What was the reaction of BITS members to the warning? JC: Our members have an âall hazardsâ approach to business-continuity planning. Theyâve got well-developed approaches that have been bolstered since 9/11. In response to new regulatory requirements, firms have done a lot to improve backup, theyâve done tests with the various exchanges. Theyâre also working in closer harmony with the federal government to share information on threats and vulnerabilities. I think thereâs a spirit of appreciation that the government is willing to share information with the financial services industry. The firms take that information into account in responding and activating their business continuity plans. IW: How do your members apply information like this that comes from DHS? JC: Iâm not sure I can give a blanket answer. Each firm has its own mechanisms for gathering information. Risk-management professionals at these firms read the paper and understand the military conflicts and theyâre mindful of that. They take it into account when they have employees traveling. Theyâll monitor where they are. With the [bird flu] pandemic issue, firms were monitoring that closely and trying to figure out what impact it would have on their organizations. IW: Is there a danger from these warnings of creating a âBoy Who Cried Wolfâ situation, where firms begin to disregard the warnings? JC: Thereâs always a concern about the crying-wolf syndrome. But our firms appreciate getting the information even if itâs not corroborated. A continuous flow of information helps build trust between the private and public sectors. IW: Was this warning about the jihadist threat something that your members see all the time, or was this an unusual kind of warning from DHS? JC: I think the warning came across the transom at a high level [saying] âpay attention to this.â So it was different from what we normally get. Weâre getting a steady stream of information on threats and vulnerabilities and a range of things. For example, if thereâs a known virus thatâs being perpetrated in [the United States] or against a financial institution. Weâre also getting information on political changes around the world. IW: Do you think DHS has its arms around the cybersecurity problem? JC: My personal opinion is that the government has some capabilities, but not all capabilities. In general, our firms would like more information, but there are many reasons why if (the government) has the information they donât provide it. But itâs a touchy question. People have lots of different views. Â  IW: Do you feel like your members are getting all the information they need? JC: Thereâs some filtering, but I donât have information to compare or validate what the filter is. We talk about issues through coordinating councils that meet quarterly. Itâs a two way conversation.Â
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THREE YEARS after 9/11/01, presidential politics is driven by fear of terrorism and war in Iraq. 9/11 represents horrifying failure of America&#39;s defense that happened on George Bush&#39;s watch.
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On the anniversary of September 11, a curious paradox about the United States is evident: the sharp contrast between its policies&#39; brilliant success in the Middle East and its strategies&#39; abject failure there.
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High-performance computing and artificial intelligence software may blast through barriers in data management to create a so-called "data cave," like the one Tom Cruise uses to catch crooks in the movie "Minority Report".