Stories by Julian Bajkowski

Optus stalks lifestyle and well-heeled road warriors with 500 hotspots

Optus, the habitual bridesmaid of the Australian telecommunications industry, has announced aggressive plans to roll out more than 500 Australian wireless hotspots in the next 12 to 18 months using the IEEE 802.11b standard in an attempt to target well-heeled road warriors and fans of American style caffeine.

Global caretaker shops at home

Chubb is a multinational that has dominated the landscape of security in Australia for more than a century; its revenues for 2001 were $1.5 billion for the Asia/Pacific region. With a staff of 17,000 people in Australia the company covers just about every aspect of security work from domestic and commercial fire alarms, cash delivery and bank safes to ASIO-vetted, government high-security environments.

Apple's very special 56K modem

When Apple launched its bevy of sleek new toys in Australia this week, the last thing on the vendor's mind would have been the signal that a 56K modem in its new wireless toy would send to the world a message about the state of connectivity in Australia.

Australia plays multinational Web war games

The Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation's C3 Research Centre is participating in joint exercises with the US, UK, Canada and Germany this week to further battle-harden the information systems of Australia's Defence Forces.

SAP aims new strategy at Defence

Hot on the heels of the presidentially-decreed unified restructure of US security, integrated solutions vendor SAP has announced a new play to export its just-launched Security Resource Management product worldwide with the Australian Defence Force (ADF) a prime target.

Devoured: Amex site holed up by worm

In a rare but commendable display of public disclosure within the financial community, American Express has revealed that its Australian customer Web site was all but taken down during the recent Slammer SQL worm attack.

Slammer worm impact short lived as victims wear egg

The impact of last Saturday's "Slammer" DDoS worm, which temporarily crippled server bandwidth in the US, Korea and Europe appears to have died a relatively quick death upon arrival in Australia, with few visible victims despite a substantial spike in scanning, according to AusCERT.

SCO war of attrition descends to farce

Source Wars, Episode 7. The intellectual property battle over who really owns what lies inside the Linux source code is primed to develop into a full-scale legal orgy, as Linux vendor Red Hat filed suit in Delaware last week alleging SCO is conducting an "unfair, untrue and deceptive campaign…to harm Red Hat's…operating system". Red Hat is demanding a jury trial, and the move immediately follows IBM's legal counter-attack on SCO.

Symantec calls for Aussie cyber tsar

In a move likely to cause more pained winces in Canberra, Symantec's global CEO and chairman John Thompson and vice president of security response, Art Wong have called on the Federal Government to create the position of an Australian cyber security tsar.

Airline chats up bookings

In a move that will bring little joy to large-scale CRM solutions vendors, fledgling airline Regional Express (REX) has deployed a live, real-time chat facility on their Web site to enable call centre staff to guide customers through the online booking process.

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