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One theme is that as the pace of globalization picks up, traditional boundaries continue to disappear. In this new global reality, “open for business” can mean pooling resources or sharing sensitive information among organizations.

Last month, IBM released a report (PDF) identifying the security challenges facing enterprises in the next two to five years. The survey is based on data collected internally by IBM.

Kris Lovejoy, director of Governance and Risk Management and Corporate Security Strategy at IBM, spoke with CNET’s Robert Vamosi about the report. She cites nine trends companies should be watching:

1. Securing virtualized environments
2. Alternative ways to delivery security
3. Securing mobile devices
4. Managing risk and compliance
5. Identity governance
6. Information security
7. Predictable security of applications
8. Protecting the evolving network
9. Sense and respond physical security

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The IBM report notes that “the line between participation and isolation can also mark the line of opportunity and risk. (Enterprises) rely on business systems and automated policies to guard that line–to root out the threats, to safeguard our intellectual property, to protect our reputations and privacy. With the emergence of each new technology, the line can shift just a bit.”

What’s also notable: the demographics. Twenty-somethings are most likely to get hit with ID theft.

Update at 9:30 a.m. PST: A new chart has been added to the end of the article.

(Credit:
FTC)

The Consumer Sentinel Network is a secure online database that harvests complaints from law enforcement authorities, as well as other groups such as the Internet Crime Complaint Center and Better Business Bureau.

This was originally published in ZDNet’s Between the Lines.

(Credit:
FTC)

(Credit:
FTC)

Here are the top 10 complaint categories, which often dovetail with the Internet.

Last year, ID theft was by far the biggest complaint to the FTC, representing 26 percent of total problems reported. The next biggest one–third-party and creditor debt collection scams–represented only 9 percent of complaints.

E-mail is clearly the preferred means of propagating fraud. Scam artists are most likely going to nail you via e-mail. Phone scams have fallen from 11 percent to 7 percent from 2007 to 2008. My hunch: as more consumers use wireless as their primary phone, it’s harder to track down victims.

The FTC’s annual Consumer Sentinel Network report (PDF), released Thursday, details that ID theft complaints totaled nearly 314,000 in 2008, up from about 259,000 in 2007 and up substantially from about 31,000 in 2000.

Identity theft cases surged in 2008, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

(Credit:
FTC)

The patch for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003, and Server 2008, plugs a vulnerability (MS09-006) that affects images created with the Enhanced MetaFile (EMF) or Windows MetaFile (WMF) display formats, according to Microsoft’s advisory.

Kandek of Qualys said the risk is minimized by the fact that not many corporations seem to use the technology involved much.

Microsoft has yet to provide a fix for a security vulnerability in Excel from last month, for which there have been zero-day exploits or a zero-day Word-Pad vulnerability from December.

“An attacker can send you an e-mail with an infected image in it or you can go to a Web site with an infected image or get it elsewhere, from a thumbdrive,” said Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer of Qualys, which helps companies with security risk and compliance.

Attackers can also disguise .WMF and .EMF files as other image file types, such as .JPG, in order to sneak them past cautious users, said Alfred Huger, vice president of development at Symantec Security Response.

Also patched on Patch Tuesday were two holes rated “important” that affected the same systems and which could be used by an attacker to masquerade as someone else in a spoofing attack.

One of the important patches, which affects Windows 2000, Server 2003, and Server 2008, resolves two privately reported vulnerabilities and two publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in Windows DNS server and Windows WINS (Windows Internet Name Server). The holes could allow an attacker to redirect network traffic intended for systems on the Internet to a malicious site, according to the advisory.

Microsoft on Tuesday issued patches for critical holes in all supported versions of Windows that could allow an attacker to take over a system by executing code remotely if the user viewed a maliciously crafted image file.

The second important patch, which affects all supported versions of Windows, (MS09-007) resolves a vulnerability in the Secure Channel security package in Windows. It could allow an attacker to gain access to the certificate used by the end user for authentication. Customers are affected only when the public key component of the certificate used has been accessed by some other means, Microsoft said.

Updated 11:15 a.m. PST with more information, security expert comments.

Virtual world, Meez, announced Wednesday that it has merged with Pulse Entertainment, a company that specializes in mobile messaging and entertainment. Although Pulse will cease to exist, Meez plans to integrate the company’s messaging platform into its virtual world and continue servicing existing Pulse customers.

The total number of online Chinese citizens has grown to approximately 298 million, reports the BBC. According to the report, which cites data from the China Internet Network Information Center, there has been a significant increase in the number of people who use mobile phones accessing the Web, which led to a 41.9 percent increase in China’s Internet population year over year. Although there are almost as many people on the Web in China as there are U.S. residents, the country has a long way to go to match Web penetration rates measured in other countries: Web penetration in China is just 22.6 percent.

The 111th U.S. Congress welcomed YouTube viewers to its page on the popular video site earlier this week. In the short, two-minute video, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other prominent politicians informed viewers that individual representatives will start posting videos on YouTube, as well as other important information of use to citizens. The YouTube channel also includes a Google Maps integration, which allows visitors to search for a specific representative and find their individual videos.

The City of Chicago has selected Translations.com, a provider of enterprise language and translation services, as the sole provider of global communication and localization software for the city’s tourism Web site, ExploreChicago.org. Trying desperately to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, Chicago decided a multilingual communication platform would be a key success factor in its appeal. The site’s multilingual Web content will be deployed in the coming weeks.

Carl Icahn notwithstanding, Yahoo’s deal to use Google search advertisements is still a go.

The partnership, which is designed to increase Yahoo’s ad revenue, is “still on track,” a source familiar with the partnership said, and an announcement is expected next week. That aligns well with reports in the New York Post and Reuters.

Take this schedule with a grain of salt. I’ve been snooping around on this particular deal for a while now, and plans to announce it have slipped several times. Jerry Yang and Yahoo’s other top executives are reckoning with Icahn, which has to be consuming a lot of time.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer lambasted the Yahoo-Google ad deal as handing over even more search-ad dominance to Google and, in effect, making Yahoo vastly less desirable. And there are antitrust concerns, though Google executives seem to think it’s not a big worry.

Even if the deal goes through and Icahn’s agitating yields a new deal with Microsoft, it’s possible that Yahoo could just switch it off without too much harm done. Even a short-term deal might well the engineers who worked long and hard on Yahoo’s Panama search-ad system to spruce up their resumes, however.

Nokia, according to the Reuters report on Tuesday, will pay $410 million for its Symbian stake.

In June, Nokia announced plans to acquire the remaining stake in smartphone software developer Symbian that it didn’t already own. Nokia, by having full ownership of Symbian, wants to beat back the competition from Apple’s
iPhone and other competitors by accelerating its product development and serve as an open-source operating system platform for other handset makers, wireless carriers, and software developers.

Samsung Electronics has agreed to sell its investment stake in Symbian to mobile phone maker Nokia, according to a Reuters report.

Next, right-click the shortcut you just created, click Properties > Shortcut > Shortcut key, type your preferred keystroke combination for opening the service, and press Enter. Now you can open the service ready to create a new file by pressing that keyboard shortcut.

Well, skipping the file-naming and storage location-choosing steps, for one thing. And having access to the notes from any Internet-connected computer, for another.

Should you find Writer to your liking, be sure to make a donation to its creator to help keep the great services coming.

You can create a keyboard shortcut to open Notepad, WordPad, Word, or any other word processor on your PC by right-clicking the program’s shortcut on the Start menu, choosing Properties > Shortcut > Shortcut key, entering your keystroke combination of choice (be sure not to overwrite one that’s already in use), and pressing Enter. I described how to get fast access to all your keyboard shortcuts in a post from last week.

Faster is almost always better, at least when it comes to computers. So what’s the fastest way to open a word processor?

Writer remembers your files by leaving a cookie with the identifying information. If you delete the cookie, you lose access to the files, unless you sign up for a free account. The account has the added benefit of providing access to your files from any Internet-connected PC.

Since Writer doesn’t require you to log in–or even to create an account–you need not give your files a name. Just stick with the default, and when you want to reopen the file, select it from your list of documents, which appears just below the text window.

Now press the keystroke combination to open the program, and start typing (or navigate to an existing file you want to open). When you’re done working in the file, press Ctrl-S, give the file a name (if it doesn’t have one already), choose a location to store it (or accept the program’s default storage folder), and press Enter. What could be simpler?

Unfortunately, if you’re not already logged in, you’ll have to enter your username and password before you can open the blank file. You can avoid the login step by creating the shortcut to the Writer online word processor that mimics the look of old DOS-based text editors running on a green-phosphor display. (The service’s bare-bones look is itself modeled after the free Dark Room word processor, which, in turn, is the Windows version of the WriteRoom word processor for
Mac OS X.)

Use the Writer online word processor for instant–and universal-access to your notes.

(Credit:
John Watson/BigHugeLabs.com)

Web word processors auto-save files
You can create a keyboard shortcut that opens Google Docs or any other Web word processor. Start by opening a new document in the service. Select the URL in the Address bar, and type Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard. Now open Windows Explorer to the Desktop or any other folder, right-click anywhere in the folder, choose New > Shortcut, paste the URL of the service into the location field, press Enter, give the shortcut a name, and press Enter again.

Monday: get more use out of Windows’ taskbar.

My advice: Buy the Home card now, spend the extra 10 bucks if you decide you want Web sharing, then reevaluate after a year. You’ll still come out ahead.

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

I’ve been testing an Eye-Fi for the last couple weeks, and it’s pretty cool. The only downside is having to leave your camera on while the photos get transferred, but it definitely beats having to fish out a USB transfer cable or pop the memory card out of the camera and into a reader.

(Note: The above link takes you to CNET’s product page for the Eye-Fi Home. On the right-hand side, you’ll see that several vendors are offering the card for $59. To get free shipping, choose either BuyDig or Beach Camera.)

If you want a little more versatility, BuyDig has the Eye-Fi Share for $79. In addition to beaming pix to your PC, it can automatically upload them to any number of online photo services (Facebook, Flickr, Snapfish, etc.). But wait: Starting Oct. 5, owners of the Home card can get the same Web-sharing feature for an annual fee of $9.99. (Eye-Fi also plans to roll out a free firmware update that will improve transfer speeds.)

By now you’ve probably heard of Eye-Fi, the Wi-Fi-enabled SD memory card that wirelessly beams photos from your camera to your PC. When it first came out last year, I thought it was overpriced at $99–but now you can scoop up an Eye-Fi Home card for just $59 shipped.

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Eye-Fi)

I have yet to read Born Digital, but had the chance to sit down with Palfrey while on book tour in San Francisco to discuss these so-called digital natives, the way they’re growing up, and the crossroads he claims society is stalled at. He says we have a choice moving forward to either embrace technology responsibly and acknowledge its growing role in our of our lives or give in to fear and limit the growth and creativity that technology can help foster.

Born in the 1970s, I have found myself to be considered an “old timer,” at least according to the research of John Palfrey, an author and Harvard University professor. Palfrey’s new book, Born Digital examines the way kids born after 1980 are coming of age in an increasingly digital world, more heavily reliant on technology than ever before. I may be pretty tech-savvy, but I can also remember listening to tapes on a Sony Walkman, researching school projects in library books, and making play dates to actually play outside, not on a video game console. Sheesh. I’m really showing my age.

Dell says the new Studio Hybrid is 80 percent smaller than a traditional PC and it will come in seven different colors. But here’s some stuff that’s not in the video: It will retail for $699 with a monitor, and $499 without, according to sources familiar with the product. And, although it’s a desktop, it’ll have Intel’s latest mobile processor in it.

The company posted a teaser video to its blog today.

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Dell)

In April, Dell pitched it as an environmentally friendly PC, and the video notes that it uses 70 percent less energy than a traditional desktop. The company also said then that the casing would be from totally recycled material, but the video doesn’t indicate that, other than the still of what looks like bamboo casing–but that would make eight colors, not seven. We’ll update as we get more information.

This post has been updated with pricing info.

The small form factor PC that Dell was talking up earlier this year will be released tomorrow.

Here’s the video: