2006 News:
Date: December 18, 2006
Source: VARBUSINESS
(abridged) VoIP FOR SMBs IS H-O-T
"It might be that their CEO's have heard the buzz about Skype and Vonage. Or it may be because it's time to upgrade the 6-year-old PBX systems they bought in the wake of Y2K. Whatever the reasons , businesses of all sizes have become extremely interested in Voice-over-IP. 'Within the past 18 months, we've been getting lots of inquires,' says Phillip Stone, president of Boardwalk Communications, a solution provider in Victoria British Columbia. 'Before that, we'd get an interested call a month, and now we get a very interested call a week.' "
Date: July 24, 2006
Source: CRN
(abridged) ARUBA, AIRWAVE TARGET LEGACY CUSTOMER BASE
"Aruba Networks and AirWave Wireless last Monday said they have teamed to help customers bring their 'Thick' wireless access points from rival Cisco Systemsand other vendors into centrally managed WLAN deployments
Via product integration and a joint marketing agreement, Aruba and AirWave are targetting the legacy customer basr of Cisco Systems as well as other vendors of thick or 'fat' access points, including Symbol Technologies, 3Com and Proxim Wireless, said Gary Sing, senior director of product marketing at Aruba, Sunnyvale, Calif. "
Date: July 3, 2006
Source: INFORMATION WEEK
(abridged) 5 Things You Must Know About VoIP ,
"Like any emerging technology, voice over IP presents a painful series of 'yes, but...' tradeoffs-Yes, it can lower calling costs, but the gear's expensive and finicky to get running. VoIP differs from most emerging technology, however, in two ways: how quickly it's being adopted and how much is at stake to get it right.
Our latest InformationWeek Research survey finds 39% of companies have installed voice over IP, another 33% will install it in the coming months. A mere 12% say they have no plans. to use it. "
Date: June 22, 2006
Source: NETWORK COMPUTING
(abridged) SAFE INSIDE A BUBBLE ,
"It's two years since the IEEE ratified 802.11i, slightly less since the Wi-Fi Alliance introduced the WPA2 certification . And still, insecurity over security is hindering wireless LAN deployments-security concern nearly tied with cost as the No. 1 barrier to adoption in our reader poll for this article; lack of a clear business justification came in third.
Mainstream wireless infrastructure vendors, including Aruba Networks, Cisco Systems, Meru Networks, Symbol Technologies and Trapeze Networks are doing a good job implementing 802.11i. Many have obtained WPA2 certifications to verify that 802.11i capabilities, including 802.1X-based authenication, CBC-MAC (Cipher Block Chaining Message Authenication Code) integrity checking and AES-CCMP (AES-Counter Mode CBC-MAC Protocol) encryption , are keeping wireless traffic moving securely from client to AP or centralized controller, then on to the wired infrastructure.... "
Date: April 17, 2006
Source: eWeek
(abridged) STITCHING UP YOUR RECORDS ,
"THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT PRIVACY AND THE HEALTH Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is that more than 80 percent of the companies involved in health care have technology and processes in place to provide the level of patient-privacy protection required by the 1996 law
The bad news? All were supposed to have been done so by April 2003. ...The problem is that HIPAA rules are often vague and technology is developing so quickly that it's often hard to decide whether flash drives, hot-site disaster recovery and other specific storage and file management technologies are covered or satisfy the rules..."
Date: March 20, 2006
Source: eWeek
(abridged) Government flunks IT Security ,
"KEY FEDERAL AGENCIES ARE RECEIVING low or failing grades on the security of their IT infrastructures, fueling critcicism of the departments charged with keeping the nation safe. In a report card issued March 16 by the U.S. Committee on Government Reform, the government last year earned a D+. Both the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense received an F, and the Department of Justice a D. There's concern that many of the agencies are focused on 'studying for the test' rather than on long-term, sustainable security. 'The question is, What does a B really mean?' asked Richard Tracy, chief technology officer of Telos, in Ashburn, Va. "Does it mean that someone just knows how to take the test now?"
