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Security experts have long advocated forcing employees to reset passwords every quarter or even more often, especially if they are accessing sensitive data. However, passwords are already notorious at IT help desks, where lost passwords or locked-out employees absorb a considerable amount of valuable support staff time. More frequent password changes likely would increase the proportion of such calls...

A little over a year ago, an international consortium of four vendors announced they were pooling their talents and resources to create a new, standardized flavor of the open-source Linux OS. The initiative was known as UnitedLinux, and the goal was to create a version of Linux that businesses and other organizations could trust for uniform reliability...

Here's a day in the upside-down life of a CIO: She reads a bunch of news articles about deflation on the train and gets depressed about the economy, then takes a phone call from a pollster and tells him she's not planning any new technology buys. Later, near the end of the day, she tells her staff to enter an order for a bunch of Gigabit Ethernet cards. Such is the quixotic landscape in which tech is struggling to make a comeback. Economic data show modest signs of recovery, but the outlook of many tech buyers remains sour.

However, Groove's Mahon eschews that label, not least because it threatens to pull Groove into Microsoft's rapacious maw as the software giant seeks to incorporate more middleware into Windows. (Microsoft has an investment in Groove.) Instead, Mahon is stumping for the liberating power of the technology. He believes that, like Napster, Groove brings a little bit of an anarchic quality to the way an increasingly mobile and connected staff functions inside the Fortune 500.

Hurley said Aberdeen estimates the number of security information personnel in any organization is about .005 percent of the total employee population. That number indicates how short-staffed most organizations are in the security arena, he noted "I suspect that some of the fe...

Dell and AT&T Wireless have announced a joint agreement that will allow Dell's mobile computer customers to access the Internet wirelessly using AT&T's GSM (global system for mobile communications)- and GPRS (general packet radio service)-based technologies ...

Dell and AT&T Wireless have announced a joint agreement that will allow Dell's mobile computer customers to access the Internet wirelessly using AT&T's GSM (global system for mobile communications)- and GPRS (general packet radio service)-based technologies ...

Dell and AT&T Wireless have announced a joint agreement that will allow Dell's mobile computer customers to access the Internet wirelessly using AT&T's GSM (global system for mobile communications)- and GPRS (general packet radio service)-based technologies ...

Apple Computer has unveiled its next-generation Power Macs, based on IBM's new 64-bit processor chip, the PowerPC G5. "The 64-bit revolution has begun, and the personal computer will never be the same again," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco ...

In macro terms, the hostile takeover has been a common, if generally reviled, tactic throughout human history. But does this art of war hold up over the long term in the business world? Are there times when such shotgun marriages turn out to be the right decision for the parties involved? Amid the Oracle-PeopleSoft-J.D. Edwards melee, now seems like the right time to ask this pressing question...

Laberge told the E-Commerce Times that Aetna still does most of its IT work in-house withapproximately 2,500 employees, but the company augments that staff with about 400 offshoreworkers. "We believe that relying on offshore contractors is a very effective means of giving us the flexibility to ramp up for time-critical projects andscale back as the situation demands," he explained. "It really saves us a lot of money."

Ignoring a personal entreaty (and a 15 percent licensing discount) from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the city of Munich, Germany, decided recently to migrate its 14,000 PC desktop users from Windows to the Linux platform ...

Apple Computer has accomplished a raft of goals since Steve Jobs returned to its helm in 1997. It has revolutionized the consumer PC with two generations of iMacs; pioneered the so-called digital hub concept, which gives consumers the ability to assemble movies as well as catalog and manipulate digital photographs; introduced the iPod, considered by many Mac and Windows users to be the best digital music player ever developed; and recently launched the iTunes Music Store, which allows users to pay for and download songs without being tied to complicated subscription agreements or limitations on how purchased media can be played...

Although the steady deluge of updates from Redmond is enough to weary an already-taxed IT staff, there are ways to streamline the process. By developing an update plan and devoting appropriate resources to the effort, it is easier to keep applications current without overburdening the IT department...

She told the E-Commerce Times that the company's software may be even more essential for small companies than for larger ones, because small businesses cannot afford to staff call centers to deal with customer questions that can be answered by an interactive self-service program...

An oft-repeated supposition when talking about a new software or hardware product is that in-house IT staff can compensate for what the technology lacks. It's often presumed that somebody on staff can patch, tweak, rejigger or jury-rig technology to make it do what it won't do "out of the box." "Any junior programmer can make that work" is a common refrain.

We all know spam when we see it, but enabling a computer to recognize it is the challenge and the goal of spam programs. Apple says it has gone beyond the approach taken by most filters, which is to look for words or addresses only in the header information of an e-mail. A technology that Apple calls "latent adaptive semantic analysis" is a process of searching through a message's entire text for patterns of words in combination, according to Apple representative Ken Bereskin. He says the company has speech experts on staff who have helped develop a unique approach to parsing combinations of words.

Although Gardner lauded the steps Microsoft has taken to shut off features and programs by default, he cautioned that achieving security in practice goes beyond disabling feature sets. "Companies recognize that this is sort of like a marriage. It's not one partner or the other who'll make it work; it's both Microsoft and the IT staff."

Both moves target employees who spend their days on their feet or in the field -- such as factory and warehouse workers, retail clerks and airline staff -- but who still could benefit from being connected to an enterprise-wide messaging system. The IBM solution is being bille...

When Hewlett-Packard merged with Compaq just over a year ago, the combined company surpassed Dell in PC sales -- but with continued yearly growth rates of more than 20 percent, Dell had regained the top spot by the first quarter of this year. Moreover, just last week, Dell reported its worldwide shipments had increased by nearly 30 percent year over year and revenues had jumped 18 percent in the same time period...