Stories by Bob Francis

Cisco's black eye at Black Hat

There I was, running late to the Black Hat conference because of the weather , riding the long escalator to the third floor of Caesar's Palace in Vegas when I heard someone at the top of the stairs yell to someone behind me on the escalator.

Dell adds Exchange services

Dell on Thursday announced a new professional services program that helps companies upgrade to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.

Rethinking the data security box

Computer security can be a difficult problem to get a handle on, so sometimes it takes some creative thinking. I would say it involves "thinking outside the box," but that's a little too trite and overused.

Security vendors respond to heightened concerns

Recent security breaches involving universities, credit card processors, and financial institutions are making security a hot topic, and security companies are busy upgrading their product lines -- either by acquiring new product lines or upgrading current products.

Dell adds high-performance switch line

Dell on Monday introduced a new series of high-performance PowerConnect switches with new security capabilities and enterprise-class management features.

Another week, more lost confidential records

It's beginning to get a little too routine. Nearly every week, some well-known, highly respected financial institution a) loses, b) misplaces, or c) has in its possession stolen confidential consumer financial data.

Cisco adds intelligence to network gear

Cisco is embarking on a new direction as it announced Tuesday details of its first move into the messaging middleware business with its Application-Oriented Network (AON) business unit.

Sun, EMC bolster storage lineups

EMC and Sun Microsystems Monday released updated and new systems designed for the growing content-addressable storage market.

Tacit upgrades WAN acceleration line

Tacit Networks on Tuesday added e-mail acceleration, distributed software management capabilities, network and Web services, increased performance features, and flexible product packaging options to its wide-area network (WAN) optimization products.

Security's weakest links

Database security is simple and can be covered in three words: encrypt, encrypt encrypt, reports Bob Francis

Security's 'simple' truth

It all sounds so simple. You save your data to a tape cartridge. When you have enough cartridges, you put them in a box and send them off to be stored.
And yet, we can't seem to go a week without some company reporting another -- usually boneheaded -- data loss. This time it's Time Warner wearing the dunce cap: the media giant lost 40 tapes with personal information on about 600,000 current and former employees as the tapes were in transit to a storage facility.

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