Verizon and IBM today unveiled Managed Data Vault, a cloud backup service that uses a software-based technology that replicates redundant copies of data offsite through software agents on application servers. Warren Sirota, strategy and program development executive at IBM, said the base service, to be offered by both Verizon and IBM, provides remote electronic storage [...]

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To the dismay of its sole scientific member, the House of Commons Select Committee on Science has come to the aid of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit – the department at the centre of the Climategate scandal – giving the boffins and the institution a gentle ticking off. Phil Willis, head of [...]

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Defragmentation is one of the chores of computer ownership, something that’s tedious but which has to be done regularly. Windows includes a free defragmentation tool, but there are plenty of competing products. How do you compete with “free”? You make something worth paying for. PerfectDisk 11 ($40, 30-day free trial) is that worthy tool. PerfectDisk [...]

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A security researcher has demonstrated a mechanism that exploits PDF files without taking advantage of any particular vulnerabilities. Didier Stevens’ proof of concept exploit relies on running an executable embedded in a PDF file – something that normally shouldn’t be possible – by launching a command that ultimately runs an executable. In the case of [...]

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Microsoft uncovered more than 1,800 bugs in Office 2010 by tapping into the unused computing horsepower of idling PCs, a company security engineer said today. Office developers found the bugs by running millions of “fuzzing” tests, said Tom Gallagher, senior security test lead with Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group. Fuzzing, a practice employed by both software [...]

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Substance-abuse recovery Hanley Center in Florida has patients, some of them celebrities, undergoing treatment to get off alcohol or drugs. With that kind of sensitive data in its computers, Hanley decided the way to keep a lid on it was to monitor every single keystroke an employee on a computer makes every day, all day. [...]

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Lawson Software announced a partnership on Wednesday that will make its ERP (enterprise resource planning) and other applications available on Amazon Web Services’ cloud-computing infrastructure service. Starting in May, Lawson’s S3 Enterprise Management System, M3 Enterprise Management System, and Talent Management application will hit Amazon’s cloud. In addition, Lawson is launching a “test drive” service [...]

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Acer on Wednesday announced its Aspire Ethos laptops, which incorporate a secondary touch screen that doubles as a touchpad to help navigate multimedia content. The extra touch screen, placed below the keyboard where a touchpad would normally sit, can display icons that make it easier for users to navigate through movies or music, said Alison [...]

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If you had a one-ton boat for which you no longer had any use, what would you do? Would you give it to a former lover, the one who sailed off with your heart, your favorite books, and your Social Security number? Or would you offer it to some charity, in the hope that they [...]

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In January, we discussed a set of highly sophisticated cyber attacks that originated in China and targeted many corporations around the world. We believe that malware is a general threat to the Internet, but it is especially harmful when it is used to suppress opinions of dissent. In that case, the attacks involved surveillance of [...]

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