Short takes on this week's news
M&S uses portal to procure IT systems
Marks & Spencer is using a portal for the procurement of its
IT systems in a bid to reduce the time its IT department spends
sourcing equipment. The UK's largest clothing retailer is using the
IT Index, a Mercato-powered procurement portal.
Suppliers aim to cut datacentre power use
IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and AMD have joined
forces to launch a project aimed at reducing energy consumption in
datacentres. The Green Grid project aims to bring together IT
professionals who want to lower the overall consumption of power in
datacentres worldwide. It will operate as an association of members
who can share best practice in datacentre power management.
Error discovered on climate project
A "major error" has been discovered in the world's biggest
distributed climate prediction project. The latest
Climateprediction.net release, launched in February and promoted on
the BBC, fails to take account of a phenomenon called "global
dimming", which relates to the effect of man-made sulphate
emissions in the atmosphere. The error has now been fixed and all
computers running the model will be automatically restarted at the
year 1920.
New agency to free police to chase hackers
A new agency to tackle child abuse is likely to free up police
computer crime units to focus on investigating hacking attacks
against businesses. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection
Centre will draw resources from the IT industry, charities and the
police to tackle online and offline abuse. The unit will use
sophisticated computer systems to trace victims and seize the
assets of criminals. The centre, launched by Home Office minister
Paul Goggins yesterday, will use advanced databases to share
information on known and suspected paedophiles.
Urban Outfitters selects ATG for e-commerce
Fashion retailer Urban Outfitters is launching its first
transactional website in Europe using ATG's Customer Experience
platform. The new e-commerce system will use ATG's Campaign
Optimiser, Commerce and Merchandising applications when it launches
this summer.
ID and Passport Service to trial biometric
checks
The Identity and Passport Service, created last month to oversee
passports and ID cards, plans to trial fingerprint recognition
technology next year. The service, which published its 10-year plan
last week, plans to use fingerprint records and a facial biometric
in electronic passports from the end of 2007. Other plans include
interviews for all first-time passport applicants and a service to
allow the private sector to check the validity of passports.
Directors in the dark about network
security
One-third of company executives do not know whether their
network security has been breached, according to a report
commissioned by network security firm nCircle. The report found a
lack of communication between IT departments and senior management,
with nearly half of managers believing they are not kept adequately
informed about IT security issues.
Unofficial patches could breach licence
terms
Businesses could be breaking software licensing agreements by
using unofficial patches provided by third parties, security
experts have warned. Security firm Internet Security Systems said
firms were tempted to use unofficial patches when flaws with known
exploits remained unpatched by software suppliers for some time.
But it said applying unofficial patches could violate software
licensing terms, invalidating support agreements.
Rush for info crashes Standard Life website
Standard Life's website was brought down last week as visitors
tried to find out about its demutualisation plans. It told
customers that it was "working hard" to deal with an unprecedented
number of visitors to the site. Its problems prompted calls from
capacity specialists for firms to review the scalability of their
infrastructure. "Often organisations are unaware of the lack of
scalability," said Danny Quilton of Capacitas.
Non-US banks hit by more phishing attacks
Last month saw a big rise in phishing attacks on non-US banks.
The increase was mainly due to a rise in the number of German banks
being targeted, said security firm RSA Cyota. US banks are still
the most targeted by phishers, with the UK second and Germany
third.