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Carl Weinschenk

Data and Telecom

Companies’ communications strategies must be agile in a rapidly evolving market

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Carl Weinschenk

September 2008

September 30, 2008

IP Video Key to Broadband Networks' Continued Maturation

There generally isn't a specific point in time when a new telecommunications platform crosses the Rubicon from the periphery to the mainstream. The process is far more subtle and nuanced. But at some... More >

Milestone in Baltimore as Xohm Launches

In what is best termed a delayed milestone, Sprint Nextel has finally launched its Xohm WiMax service. As we reported, the service has been in soft launch for months, but now is being offered to the... More >

September 29, 2008

More Weapons Emerge in the VoIP Security Battle

Two weeks ago, I posted a blog based on an Interop panel in which participants concluded that there were significant potential threats to VoIP security, but that for the most part, problems have so ... More >

Government, Industry Taking Sharper Aim at ID Theft

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em -- if only to keep an eye on 'em.   That's the idea behind one interesting feature of Affinion Security Center's Identity Secure theft prevention service. The se... More >

September 26, 2008

Gartner MQ Finds Lots to Like in Unified Communications Sector

No Jitter reports Gartner's latest unified communications Magic Quadrant. The report says that to qualify, companies need to compete in three of six categories: voice and telephone; conferencing; me... More >

September 25, 2008

Life Still Risky on the Wild, Wild Web

A quartet of studies and attention from the group mandated to protect credit and debit cards makes clear that threats from Web application exploits are as dangerous -- or even more dangerous -- than ... More >

Voting Concerns Persist as Election Nears

Presidential and Congressional elections are about a month away, so this is a good time to revisit the state of voting machine security.   Most of the online security news concerning the electio... More >

September 24, 2008

The G1 Kicks off the Android Era

The release of the Android-based G1 smartphone from T-Mobile, Google and HTC is something of a milestone in the evolution of mobility. This long review by InformationWeek gives it pretty good grades... More >

Scrambling in the Desert: Nevada Encryption Mandate Begins Oct. 1

A lot of people in the security industry will be watching Nevada with interest beginning next month. On Oct. 1, a law goes into effect mandating encryption of all transmissions over the Internet th... More >

September 23, 2008

Unified Communications' Expansive Landscape

Though we tend to speak of big categories such as unified communications as monolithic wholes, it is no surprise that platforms have different strengths and weaknesses. What perhaps is surprising -- ... More >

September 22, 2008

Video Conferencing Becomes More Things to More People

It is a sign of great change that an Interop panel last week expressly dedicated to video conferencing spent far more time discussing telepresence and other sophisticated platforms than the rudimen... More >

September 19, 2008

VoIP Security: A Bit of Protection Is Worth a Byte of Cure

VoIP has to a great extent avoided the wrath of hackers, crackers and other malware distributors. However, that good fortune is no reason to relax, said two CTOs who sat on an Interop panel,  Securi... More >

September 18, 2008

Security Vendors Have Their Heads in the Clouds

Security is a perfect candidate to relocate into the cloud. It is something that requires special expertise, it moves quickly -- updates must be pushed out with increasing speed to keep ahead of the ... More >

September 17, 2008

SMB VoIP Efforts: Slow and Steady

Small businesses constitute the biggest sector of the market. A major question going forward is how quickly SMBs -- and especially the smaller players among them -- will adopt VoIP. The news to date... More >

September 16, 2008

M2M Applications Dominating Verizon Wireless's Open-Access Network

Apparently, the soul of the new machine is mechanical.   This Unstrung piece says that machine-to-machine (M2M) projects account for 90 percent of the initiatives in the pipeline for certificat... More >

Virginia Spam Law Struck Down, Experts Question CAN-SPAM

Often, high courts, such as state supreme courts and the U.S. Supreme Court, make decisions that at first appear to be counterintuitive. Once the decisions are studied (or, in the case of non-attorne... More >

September 15, 2008

Skype on the Hot Seat

Skype is in a unique position. As a standalone company, it is doing quite well. But its position within the eBay family appears tenuous. This point is made quite well in this BusinessWeek story , wh... More >

Progress Being Made on a Variety of Fuel Cells Approaches

Powering is a scary issue for the mobile industry. Devices are adding features and networks are adding bandwidth at a pace that far exceeds the ability to increase the juice in lithium-ion batteries ... More >

September 12, 2008

It's Not Glitzy, but Password Vigilance Still Vital

The yin and yang of password security is amply illustrated in this piece at ServerWatch about an open source tool called john-the-ripper . The writer presents it as a way for IT to identify vulnerab... More >

September 11, 2008

Seven Years Later, Communications Tools Show Some Improvement

The seventh anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon is a good time to look at what progress has been made in the ability of people to communicate during a crisis.   It see... More >

How Open Are Carriers to Open Networks?

It's interesting that this advance story on the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment show in San Francisco focuses on what will be the biggest change to hit wireless in a decade: the opening of the n... More >

September 10, 2008

Changes in the Work Force Mean Changes in Security Landscape

One of the underlying themes of the past year or so in security is the tension caused by the increasing use of personal devices in the workplace. Processor discusses several related issues. The fli... More >

September 9, 2008

Netbooks Further Crowd the Space Between Smartphones and Laptops

There will be a lot of money made and lost determining precisely how the space between smartphones and laptops is divvied up. The netbook, of course, is the new kid on the block.   There is a lo... More >

The Rearranged World of Virtualized Environments a Security Challenge

Late last month, I blogged about the challenges virtualization poses for disaster recovery and business continuity . The post cited a Symantec survey that said, in essence, there is a disconnect bet... More >

September 8, 2008

The Early Bird Avoids the Worm (and Other Malware)

The speed with which malware is released onto the Internet is startling, and is causing security vendors and their clients -- at least those that are not in denial -- to react with equal speed. Indee... More >

September 5, 2008

Carrier Ethernet Still Struggling to Find its Niche

Carrier Ethernet is an important convergence topic because the use of the same protocols in the telecommunications portion of the network and local-area network (LAN) can lead to significant changes ... More >

3G Networks Facing a Stress Test

While much of the talk focuses on various approaches to 4G services, the most widely deployed wireless broadband network will remain 3G for the foreseeable future. This week, comScore said the U.S. ... More >

Money Matters: Security Execs Get Bigger Budgets, Higher Profiles

This Dark Reading report on a presentation and related research by Forrester on security spending suggests that security executives are more visible in the enterprise. That enlarged profile brings c... More >

September 4, 2008

Security Questions Dog Skype

A very well-done piece in The Register describes serious problems with Skype security.   In fact, there are two issues. The first is that people's accounts are being hijacked and nobody understa... More >

September 3, 2008

Just off the Lot, Chrome Suffers Its First Dent

Web security -- what can be done to stop bad code before it does bad things -- is a vital topic.   One side of the story is creating applications secure enough that they can't easily be tampered... More >

MIDs and Mobile Linux: Perfect Traveling Companions

The jockeying continues in the mobile Linux sector and, it appears, a good deal of the sizzle will be on mobile Internet devices (MIDs), the emerging class of devices between smartphones and ultra mo... More >

September 2, 2008

Read It and WEP: PCI Upgrade to Phase out Older Wireless Security

On October 1, The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) will undergo significant changes.   E-Commerce Times does a good job of outlining PCI DSS v. 1.2. The new iteration of P... More >

September 1, 2008

Comcast Bandwidth Limits Anger Observers

Watching Comcast feint and jab against its customers, the FCC and Net Neutrality advocates is fun. Its next move -- after it was batted down by the FCC in its frontal assault on peer-to-peer applicat... More >

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