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NIH's ID system could be start of
single sign on for government services
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20100304_7955.php?oref=topnews
By Aliya Sternstein 03/04/2010
Researchers and other visitors to Web sites operated by the National Institutes of Health now can speed through the once arduous process of accessing privacy-protected pages on multiple sites by entering a single password one time.
NIH is one of the first federal agencies to take advantage of the OpenID service that providers unveiled on Wednesday. OpenID enables users registered with a participating provider to switch between secure federal sites without having to log in repeatedly. Equifax, Google and PayPal are members of the new coalition of providers, called the Open Identity Exchange, that has developed a framework for securely sharing user credentials among federal and commercial Web sites.
"It's a real advantage for the user, who doesn't have to get another password and try to remember it," said Peter Alterman, senior adviser to the NIH chief information officer for strategic initiatives. The National Library of Medicine this week began offering a front door, a single sign-on page called the NIH Federated Identity Service. Visitors can use the service to access about 10 applications, including the NIH library and for training winners of grants covering allergy and infectious diseases research. The service eventually could provision credentials for up to 450 NIH applications.
The General Services Administration has approved Open Identity Exchange technology and its policies. Equifax, Google and PayPal are the first identity management companies certified by the exchange to launch their technology on federal sites. The long-term goal is for citizens to be able to log on to one of the providers to complete a variety of transactions such as applying for a government job, changing an address and checking the status of a tax refund -- all during the same online session.
For the federal government, the benefits are equal, if not greater. "The less personal information that we have to keep, the safer things are," Alterman said. Also, "We don't have to maintain a directory or a list of IDs and passwords." Help desks that support credentialing and reset passwords all cost money, he added.
The exchange is a public-private partnership that represents trust between the government and industry, which built the framework, and between the government and citizens, who will obtain more services online if they know they can do so easily and securely, said Ron Carpinella, a vice president at Equifax Identity Management. "This is a first step to go forward and move toward those goals," he said.
Equifax, known mostly for its credit report business, manages files on more than 250 million people, which is most of the adult U.S. population. Its database provides NIH and other agencies a potentially huge user base, Carpinella noted. "This is just scratching the surface of where it can go," he said.
Eric Sachs, senior product manager at Google, said in a statement, "We've already seen encouraging implementations of identity technologies in the industry, and our hope is that the work of the [exchange] will expand on this progress to help facilitate more open government participation, as well as improve security on the Internet by reducing password use across Web sites."
PayPal officials said the GSA-approved framework was critical to the success of digital identity. "Trusted identities and consumer control of personal information are essential to the effectiveness of transactions on the Internet," Andrew Nash, senior director of identity services for the company, said in a statement.
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Open Identity Exchange backs U.S. gov't privacy guidelines
Founding members of Open Identity Exchange include Google, Equifax, PayPal and Verizon (and Wave)
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/030410-open-identity-exchange-privacy.html?hpg1=bn
By Ellen Messmer, Network World
March 04, 2010 11:33 AM ET
A group called the Open Identity Exchange officially launched this week to support federal government guidelines for online privacy and security and undergo certification to assure compliance. Founding members include Google, Equifax, PayPal and Verizon, among others.
Identity fraud climbed 12% last year
According to OIX chairman Dan Thibeau, the organization was created to show support by the private sector for standards from the federal government's Identity, Credential and Access Management (ICAM) Subcommittee of the Information Security and Identity Management Committee established in September 2008 by the Federal CIO Council. ICAM, co-chaired by the General Services Administration and the Deptartment of Defense, is composed of chief privacy officers within the federal government who have agreed on a set of privacy and security policies and technologies related to online interactions with citizens.
The federal government's CIO Vivek Kundra "reached out to private industry on this," Thibeau says, noting Kundra encouraged the formation of OIX as a way to get online service providers on board with the federal government's vision for privacy and security of information related to individuals' e-mail and Web interactions.
Thibeau says federal civilian agencies, in particular, want to be able to expand electronic exchanges with citizens under the ICAM-envisioned authentication framework. The initial focus of the OIX effort is related to the simplest -- and acknowledged lowest -- level of assurance that pertains to privacy issues in interactions such as OpenID-based e-mail that citizens might use with federal agencies.
The privacy issue at stake is that federal agencies, when interacting with citizens online, do not want e-mail or Web usage information about individuals to be sold to a third party, nor should that e-mail information be used to advertise to the person, Thibeau says. The membership of the OIX formally agrees to those restrictions -- what Thibeau calls "rules and tools"-- and in addition, OIX members agree to undergo an audit to ensure compliance.
Exact aspects of that are still in review, but OIX anticipates it will publish a list of accredited auditors for this purpose, and it will be up to the OIX members to pay for this process.
Read more about security in Network World's Security section.
Bigwigs use RSA to tell the world how they will fix cloud security
http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid201_gci1408739,00.html
EMC, VMware and Intel demoed a team effort to bake security into virtualization at the RSA Conference, with the trio saying it was part of their long-term alliance (translation: multi-vendor lock-in) designed to improve security all the way down the stack. It appears to be kissing cousins with Intel's remarkably proprietary Trusted Computing Platform and uses some of the same technology to lock down code and virtual machines from the iron on up.
Dark Reading's Kelly Higgins reports RSA president Art Coviello as saying "[the ability] to prove compliance is not just theoretical." That's great news. Nobody else was really worried about compliance being a security net zero and a useless rubber stamp, and nobody's put any work into coming up with vendor-neutral ways to independently ensure security. SearchCloudComputing.com officially will not trust any cloud that's not 100% VMware, Intel and EMC from now on.
In other news, EMC showed exactly how it is going to handle a new strategic partnership with subsidiary VMware by buying up 80% of its stock.
Seagate to Present at Morgan Stanley Technology Conference
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/news/stock-alert/ms_seagate-to-present-at-morgan-stanley-technology-media-amp-telecom-conference-2010-810543.html
Wave Systems (WAVX) rallied by 93 cents
http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/story/10692078/1/wave-systems-usec-midday-volume-plays.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA
or 24.5%, to $4.73 in the absence of any company-specific news. Investors posting on Internet message boards argued that Wave Systems was trading here on sheer momentum a week before reporting fourth-quarter results. Bearish traders added that the breakout is overextended, and that the parabolic movement in the stock means that a selloff is imminent. Volume topped 2.22 million shares, compared to the 50-day average daily volume of 517,000.
Wave Systems: The Trend Continues Up (WAVX)
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/news/stock-alert/wavx_wave-systems-the-trend-continues-up-wavx--797009.html
See the PowerRating of WAVX now and learn how it rates on a 1-10 scale.The higher the PowerRating, the greater potential short-term gain based on historical data.
Feb 23, 2010 (SmarTrend(R) Spotlight via COMTEX) --
SmarTrend identified an Uptrend for Wave Systems (NASDAQ: WAVX | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) on November 16, 2009 at $1.22. In approximately 3 months, Wave Systems has returned 150% as of today's recent price of $3.05.
Wave Systems is currently above its 50-day moving average of $1.95 and above its 200-day moving average of $1.22. Look for these moving averages to climb to confirm the company's upward momentum.
SmarTrend will continue to scan these moving averages and a number of other proprietary indicators for any shifts in the trajectory of Wave Systems shares.
Write to Chip Brian at cbrian@tradethetrend.com
What's more impressive is the volume! e/
Newly2b,
Has anyone here heard of Emagin (EMAN) Corp? In addition to PANL, it's one I've followed for some time.
What Will Be Hot at RSA 2010?
The show is one week away -- here's a prediction on which technologies will be buzzing
By joltsik on Mon, 02/22/10 - 10:18am.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/57809
CloseIn the midst of the global recession, I found the RSA 2009 Conference to be a big snooze. Not much was new and the show lacked any focus.
I doubt whether this year's conference will be as lethargic. Security spending is on the rise and new regulations around data protection and breach notification are making their way through congress. With this as background, I believe the hot topics at this year's conference will include:
1. Network security. ESG Research indicates that this is the biggest security priority for most large organizations. I expect to hear about virtual devices and lightning fast multi-function security gateways. Good news for Cisco, Crossbeam, Fortinet, Juniper, and McAfee.
2. Endpoint security. There seems to be a renaissance in this category as endpoint agents consolidate and offer enhanced security protection. Advantage Kaspersky, Sophos, and Symantec.
3. Cloud security. There will be a lot of hype here about this security widget and the next but the two real interesting things will be cloud security strategy (look for the good work done by the Cloud Security Alliance), and security SaaS. Cisco's reputation service and Trend Micros Smart Protection Network are prototypical applications here.
4. Identity management. I expect massive changes in this area over the next few years as models like OpenID, Shibboleth, and PKI as a service take off. Lots of folks to talk to here including CA, IBM, Novell, and Oracle (if Oracle will answer my calls that is), and PGP.
5. Data security. I'm hoping that the discussion is less about tactical technologies like DLP, eRM, and encryption, and more about enterprise efforts around data security and information governanace. HP and IBM will have a lot to say here.
6. Cybersecurity. The Federal government is ramping up several efforts to bolster government security and improve security within critical infrastructure protection industries. Hopefully, I will have a chance to speak with DHS, US-Cert, and NSA about this.
The RSA Conference is a tale of two cities. Half of the people are talking and learning about real security problems and strategies while the other half is yacking about products. I'm hoping that my time is spent on the former and not the latter.
Top 10 Best-Performing Tech Stocks YTD:
http://www.cnanalyst.com/2010/02/top-10-bestperforming-tech-stocks-ytd-vias-bosc-smtl-hx-cpciq-cnxt-wavx-cnlg-pfsw-otiv-feb-18-2010.html
Systems Corp. (NASDAQ:WAVX) is the 7th best-performing stock year-to-date in this segment of the market. It has risen 90.85% since the beginning of this year. Its price percentage change is 310.61% for the last 52 weeks.
Wave to present next month....
Maybe we'll get another "Needham Effect".....
ROTH Capital Partners to Hold 22nd Annual OC Growth Stock Conference March 15-17, 2010
Over 350 Companies Scheduled To Present in Biotechnology, Medical Devices, Pharmaceuticals, Media & Internet, Enterprise Software, Gaming, Semiconductors, Global Energy and Industrials, Industrials and Retail & Consumer
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ROTH Capital Partners (ROTH), www.roth.com, a full service investment bank recognized for providing financing and advisory services to emerging growth companies worldwide, today announced that their 22nd Annual OC Growth Stock Conference will be held March 15-17, 2010 at The Ritz Carlton, located at 1 Ritz Carlton Drive, Dana Point, California.
“This is a conference that our clients look forward to each year”
The three-day, institutional investor conference will be the largest ROTH conference ever and will feature management presentations from over 350 small cap public companies--100 of those companies are based in China. The broad spectrum of presenting companies will represent the following sectors: Healthcare (Biotech, Medical Devices and Pharmaceuticals), Media & Internet, Enterprise Software, Gaming, Semiconductors, Global Energy and Industrials and Retail & Consumer.
This event is designed to provide investors with a unique chance to gain insight into small- and mid-cap growth companies and is expected to attract 2,500 attendees, including over 1,500 institutional investors. The conference is formatted to maximize investor/company interaction through a combination of company presentations, Q&A sessions, expert panels and management one-on-one meetings.
"This is a conference that our clients look forward to each year," commented Byron Roth, CEO of ROTH. "We believe that destination conferences are much more effective in getting the institutional investors to focus on our presenting companies without distractions. It also provides investors with an opportunity to discover new ideas and share ideas with each other versus just doing maintenance work on names they already know."
Small-cap equities posted strong gains during 2009, and investor interest in emerging growth companies remains high, according to Mark Tobin, ROTH Director of Research.
"As 2009 progressed, investors demonstrated a renewed interest in investment opportunities with emerging growth stocks," said Tobin. "The performance of our research coverage universe highlights this, with our BUY-rated stocks returning 66% during 2009, compared to 25% for the Russell 2000, 44% for the Nasdaq, 23% for the S&P500, and 19% for the Dow.* We are optimistic that this momentum will continue into 2010 and strong early interest in this year's conference supports this view."
The presenting companies were carefully selected by ROTH's research team and represent a median market cap of approximately $300 million. More than 185 of the presenting companies are covered by ROTH's team of 21 publishing analysts.
PC Security Hack Is No Big Deal
http://www.glgroup.com/News/PC-Security-Hack-Is-No-Big-Deal-46489.html
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Analysis by: Jim Turley
Analysis of: Security Chip That Does Encryption In PCs Hacked | www.npr.org
Source: www.glgroup.com
Summary:
The security hack was time-consuming, expensive, and technically difficult. It's not broadly applicable to PCs in general.
It required physically obtaining and disassembling the entire PC, so it's only relevant to stolen machines, not "drive by" security hacks.
The methods, although expensive and complex, are already well-known in the industry.
Analysis:
Chalk one up to sensational journalism
A new Associated Press article article describes, in somewhat breathless terms, how security consultant Chris Tarnovsky "cracked" the security chip found in most PCs. According to the article, this will lead to widespread identity theft, lost pa swords, stolen military secrets, and more.
Although the details of Tarnovsky's exploits are accurate, the fallout is not. In reality, this is no big deal. Here's the background.
Almost all new PCs now have a so-called "trusted platform module," or TPM, chip. This is something Microsoft has been urging PC vendors to include as a way to make PCs (and by extension, Windows) somewhat more trustworthy for online transactions, banking, and other secure tasks. Several chip vendors produce TPM chips, with Infineon's being the most common. The TPM chip stores the PC user's passwords and, in some cases, fingerprint or smartcard info. It's the TPM chip that authenticates these things when you turn on your PC.
Tarnovsky broke into a TPM chip by literally breaking into it. He opened up a PC, disassembled it, and removed the TPM chip from the motherboard. He then disassembled the chip itself, a lengthy and expensive process that likely took weeks to accomplish. This is known in the industry as "decapitating" a chip, and it's common practice when analyzing competitors' components. There are a handful of commercial firms that specialize in decapitating chips for their clients. ChipWorks, for example, is one such company. (These companies are typically based in Canada rather than the U.S. because of the more lenient copyright and patent laws there.)
Given that Tarnovsky had to physically disassemble an entire PC and then painstakingly decapitate the TPM chip inside it, his efforts hardly represent a widespread threat to PC users as a whole. The process is expensive, time-consuming, and very technically delicate. And in the end, it's no different than having a PC stolen or lost: all the data is effectively compromised anyway.
So the message here is: protect sensitive data on PCs but don't treat it -- or any form of security -- as foolproof. Padlocks, passwords, barbed-wires fences, moats, and every other form of security can be compromised if someones badly wants to. These are deterrents, not guarantees.
Mobile Security: A Surefire Laptop Encryption Strategy
http://www.enterprisemobiletoday.com/features/
By Laura Taylor
Enterprise Mobile Today.com
February 8, 2010
Mobile computing brings increased productivity to the enterprise, but it also opens up businesses to mobile security risks. One of the biggest problems mobile IT departments face is figuring out how to secure confidential information stored on laptops and netbooks. These mobile devices are often stolen or lost no matter how careful the owner, and it's safe to say that laptop theft and loss will continue to be an ongoing challenge for mobile device managers.
There are different security controls mobile IT can put in place to secure the private information on laptops, including personal firewalls, passwords, recovery software (e.g. LoJack for Laptops) and end-user "Rules of Behavior" explained in corporate policy. However, none of these security controls come close to providing the security that self-encrypting drives offer.
The hardware-based, self-encrypting drive solution is so effective, that I'm fairly confident that this nascent market will become a huge trend and be widely adopted in the enterprise. Here I'll outline the reasons why this strategy is so sound -- and why software-based disk encryption is not -- and will also provide an overview of the top vendors in this sector. Finally, I'll also list the types of businesses and agencies that can benefit from this mobile security approach.
In 2008, according to a study done by the Ponemon Institute, 12,000 laptops were lost in U.S. airports each week. According to DatalossDB, 20 percent of all security incidents are due to stolen laptops. When a laptop is lost or stolen, obviously all of the information on it is at risk. In addition to the owner's personal data, national security secrets, patents, original source code and authoritative records can be exposed.
If losing the laptop and information were not bad enough, nothing is more embarrassing to an organization than having to make a public announcement about it. Government agencies and publicly traded companies are required by law to report such security incidents. Laptop encryption can help enterprises avoid security risks and the associated consequences, and there are two commonly practiced approaches -- software-based disk and hardware-based disk encryption.
Software- vs. Hardware-Based Full Disk Encryption
Software-based full disk encryption is not actually new. It's been around for a few years, and while it does appear to work, it has not been adopted on a large scale. Managing software-based full disk encryption at the enterprise level is cumbersome, which is one of the reasons that it has not been widely deployed. Many users refuse to use software-based encryption and disable it after it has been setup.
One reason that users disable it is because the performance for software-based encryption is sub-optimal. Disks that are encrypted by the software have much slower throughput than disks encrypted by the hardware.
The time it takes to perform the initial encryption for a software-based full disk encryption solution takes hours. In a recent analysis done by Trusted Strategies, one software-based full disk encryption product took almost 24 hours to encrypt a 500 GB drive. In this same lab test, the software-based full disk encryption product that worked the fastest took a little over three hours. For hardware-based full disk encryption, the encryption time is virtually instantaneous.
There are other performance issues, too, once the encryption is completed. With software-based full disk encryption, it takes approximately 17-18 seconds longer to boot a system. Yet with hardware-based full disk encryption, the additional boot time is only about 2 seconds longer.
Another problem with software-based full disk encryption is that for many software-based encryption products, the keys used to perform the encryption are stored in dynamic RAM. This means that there is the potential to access the keys, and thereby defeat the encryption mechanism, just as researchers at Princeton University proved with the cold-boot attack on encryption keys. With hardware-based full disk encryption, the encryption takes place in the ASIC and the encryption key never leaves the drive and is never launched into memory.
Systems using hardware-based full disk encryption use one password to authenticate before the master boot record is launched. Unless you can authenticate with the proper password, the data on the disk is completely inaccessible. For that reason, with hardware-based full disk encryption, the information on a lost or stolen laptop is completely secure.
Using full disk encryption enterprise management software, from vendors such as Wave Systems, the IT department can look up the configuration of a lost laptop. In this example, IT staff can then use the Wave Embassy Remote Admin Server (ERAS) to find out immediately if full disk encryption was deployed. If the laptop had full disk encryption deployed, it is not necessary to report the loss to authorities. All the IT department has to do is restore the user's files from backup onto a new laptop and the user is ready to go.
Once users are setup for hardware-based full disk encryption, most will not even know the difference, and none of them will be able to disable it. They will login to their laptop using their password, and the encryption will work continually without any action needed from the user. If a user forgets his or her password, the IT admin team can use ERAS to obtain an emergency access recovery password. (If you have ever been a system administrator, you know that everything works better if the users have as little involvement as possible.)
Vendors to Watch
The vendor that is the leading innovator in full disk encryption is Seagate, which was founded in 1979, and first started shipping drives with hardware-based full disk encryption in March of 2007. Seagate's current market cap is 8.8 billion. Though Seagate's net income in 2009 came to a 3.8 billion loss, its most recent quarter (MRQ) showed a net income of 179 million and most financial analysts are predicting a positive outlook and bullish ratings for Seagate in the upcoming year. As of Jan. 15, Seagate was showing a 307 percent return on investment.
Vendors who will be challenging Seagate for a share of the market include Samsung, Hitachi, and Toshiba all of whom have more recently started offering hardware-based, self-encrypting drives. Samsung offers a solid-state solution while Hitachi and Toshiba offer traditional, spinning hardware based self-encrypting drives. The Trusted Computing Group's (TCG) free, non-proprietary Storage Architecture Core Specification has enabled more hardware vendors to jump into the self-encrypting storage market.
All of Seagate's disks have to be managed by software drivers such as those made by Wave Systems. Wave Systems, headquartered in Lee, Massachusetts, was founded in 1988. Wave Systems specializes in management software for hardware security such as self-encrypting drives and Trusted Platform Modules. Their full disk encryption drivers for Seagate's disks that offer full disk encryption integrate with Active Directory and can be centrally managed.
While the encryption hardware in the self-encrypting drive is always on and cannot be turned off, mobile managers must set the security for accessing the drive. When you first get your new computer, you use the Wave EMBASSY Security Center to turn on the security settings, assigned users and set the passwords required to access the self-encrypting drive. These functions are under the Manage tab of the Trusted Drive screen.
Once you have the self encrypting drive initialized and configured, you have a secure vault for all the data you send to the drive and you are actually logging onto the hardware that unlocks the drive and releases the data. You have one password that logs you into your computer, your drive, and your Windows session. Wave supports sleep mode, so you can slap the lid closed, and your drive will be locked. The drives use AES but only Seagate's solution is FIPS 140-2 compliant. (There are other configuration options available through the EMBASSY Security Center, but those are outside the scope of this article.)
The Seagate and Wave Systems full disk encryption solution is currently being bundled together and sold by Dell. Self-encrypting drive volumes are seeing quarterly growth rates of 40-50 percent or more.
Who Needs Hardware-Based Full Disk Encryption?
If you don't want to worry about losing your company's sensitive information, a self-encrypting hard disk will put that worry to rest.
Hardware-based, full disk encryption is ideal for the following uses:
Federal agencies subject to OMB Memo M-06-16
Healthcare providers employing telehealth or telemedicine that have private patient information on laptops
Intelligence agencies with classified information
E-mortgage financial institutions that have eNotes on laptops
Anyone with credit card or bank account information on their laptop
People with company patent or proprietary secrets on their laptops
Consultants who work with sensitive customer information
DoD agencies with National Security Information on laptops
Organizations subject to compliance with Gramm-Leach-Bliley
Organizations subject to PCI compliance
Organization subject to the Base 1 II regulation
Organizations subject to HSPD-12 and HIPAA
While still a nascent market, the hardware-based self-encrypting drive market will likely prove to have more impact on the mobile security in the years to come than any other technology.
Wave Integrating Support for Intel(R) vPro(TM) Technology in Its Software for Enterprise Management of Self-Encrypting
Market Wire
1:05 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) Feb 04, 2010
Wave Systems Corp.
LEE, MA, Feb 04 (Marketwire) --
Wave Systems Corp. (NASDAQ: WAVX) (www.wave.com) today announced the
integration of support for Intel(R) vPro(TM) Technology into its
EMBASSY(R) software, a solution for secure and robust management of
self-encrypting hard drives in the enterprise. Self-encrypting drives --
where encryption is built into the drive itself -- are available from all
the major drive vendors and leading PC OEMs.
Visit Wave's booth at Intel's vBiz 2010 virtual event for details of the
solution and to view the Intel-produced video featuring Wave President and
CEO Steven Sprague (also available by clicking here:
http://www.westlakemediagroup.com/intel/IDF09-1a-WaveDemo-10.zip)
Intel vPro contains hardware-embedded secure remote management technology.
Wave's solution is designed to enhance and leverage this technology by
letting IT initiate a secure, remote connection with a PC, regardless of
its power state. Potential benefits to the enterprise include:
-- End users no longer need to supply a password for self-encrypting
drives in multi-user workstations (such as a nursing station in a
hospital). The network administrator can now perform a secure unlock
of the drive without passwords -- eliminating the costs associated with
passwords for non-mobile PCs.
-- Restricting the use of specific PCs to specific network segments,
facilities or rooms by only unlocking the self-encrypting drive if the
machine is connected to an authorized port.
-- Support for standard remote management flows. Enables authorized IT to
remotely image or issue patches over the network, thus reducing the
cost of management, without compromising security or disruption to IT
work flow.
-- Enabling remote user credential recovery that is invisible to the end
user.
-- By operating independently from the operating system (OS), IT can
unlock a drive even with a corrupted OS.
-- Support for "green" initiatives. Environmentally conscious companies
can power down unused systems without impacting standard IT management
practices.
-- Support for all industry-standard, Opal-compliant self-encrypting
drives (including both standard and solid-state versions) from Fujitsu,
Hitachi, Samsung and Toshiba, along with Seagate's DriveTrust(TM)
technology, now available from leading PC OEMs.
"The all new 2010 Intel(R) Core(TM) processor family features
intelligent performance and unique security features to help businesses
address their top concerns -- cutting costs and increasing efficiency,"
said Lisa Watts, Director, Business Client Ecosystem Development, Intel
Corporation. "Intel recognizes Wave Systems as one of the industry
leaders for enhancing many of the advanced 'smart features' of vPro
Technology that enables fast and easy management of self-encrypting
drives. This will offer real value and benefit in the future as more
enterprises select self-encrypting drives to protect data at rest."
"We're proud of the fact that today we're the first ISV that is fully
integrating vPro support into an end-to-end solution for managing the
built-in security of self-encrypting drives," said Brian Berger, Executive
Vice President of Marketing & Sales for Wave Systems. "This solution
addresses many enterprise requirements for deploying drives in
organizations, such as how to send patches or perform routine maintenance
during off hours or how to bypass end users in providing passwords to
unlock an encrypted drive."
Support for vPro is available today in Wave's EMBASSY client and server
software for beta testing. Wave plans to integrate vPro support as a
standard feature, with the first commercially available versions planned
for later in 2010 -- allowing users to have the benefits of security
installed in the factory vs. an aftermarket solution.
SELF-ENCRYPTING DRIVES: A GROWING SEGMENT OF THE MOBILE DATA PROTECTION
MARKET
Self-encrypting drives (SEDs) can provide businesses with superior
security for data at rest and can help to ensure compliance with the
growing list of data privacy regulations. SEDs received attention last
year with the publication of the Trusted Computing Group's Opal storage
specification -- a single framework for hardware-based encryption --
allowing the major drive vendors to design drives of their own based on
the functions defined in the standard.
About Wave Systems Corp.
Wave provides software to help solve critical enterprise PC security
challenges such as strong authentication, data protection, network access
control and the management of these enterprise functions. Wave is a
pioneer in hardware-based PC security and a founding member of the Trusted
Computing Group (TCG), a consortium of more than 100 companies that forged
open standards for hardware security. Wave's EMBASSY(R) line of client-
and server-side software leverages and manages the security functions of
the TCG's industry standard hardware security chip, the Trusted Platform
Module (TPM) and supports the TCG's "Opal" self-encrypting drive standard.
Self-encrypting drives are a growing segment of the data protection
market, offering increased security and better performance than many
existing software-based encryption solutions. TPMs are included on an
estimated 300 million PCs and are standard equipment on many
enterprise-class PCs shipping today. Using TPMs and Wave software,
enterprises can substantially and cost-effectively strengthen their
current security solutions. For more information about Wave and its
solutions, visit http://www.wave.com.
Safe Harbor for Forward-Looking Statements
This press release may contain forward-looking information within the
meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and
Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the
Exchange Act), including all statements that are not statements of
historical fact regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of
the company, its directors or its officers with respect to, among other
things: (i) the company's financing plans; (ii) trends affecting the
company's financial condition or results of operations; (iii) the
company's growth strategy and operating strategy; and (iv) the
declaration and payment of dividends. The words "may," "would," "will,"
"expect," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe," "intend" and similar
expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify
forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such
forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and
involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company's
ability to control, and that actual results may differ materially from
those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various
factors. Wave assumes no duty to and does not undertake to update
forward-looking statements.
All brands are the property of their respective owners.
Hardware-Based Encryption Engine Delivers Safety
http://thetechedition.com/hardware-based-encryption-engine-delivers-safety-not-including-the-overhead/
by John B. Emmerson III on February 3, 2010
Multi-user encryption system may not to be required for the particular PC users who are not in area of interest to business procedures and authoritarian compliance. As soon as they like to shield personal and further touchy information can straightforwardly deploy a notebook with a Momentus FDE hard drive, which installs as easily as a traditional drive. After installed, the user simply enters a BIOS password, then logs on as usual, and the security is in place. The hardware-based encryption engine Serves Protection Not including the overhead; no bootup delays, no system slowdown; and the BIOS by design confirms the user for obvious security.
For companies requiring excessive strength verification and a unfussy manner to meet state and federal consumer-confidentiality laws, Momentus FDE HD; the industry’s pioneer hard drive with built-in encryption, can be organizeed in notebook fleets to allow protected disposal and re purposing of drives as well as notebooks; security audits; password escrow; pre-boot confirmation in the document of biometrics, passwords and smart cards; and simple central administration.
Momentus 7200 FDE is Seagate’s initial high-performance (7200 RPM) self-encrypting notebook drive, along with volumes of 320GB and 160GB and a 16MB cache. Seagate’s Momentus 5400 RPM as well as 7200 RPM self-encrypting hard drives in volumes up to 500GB are scheduled to begin distribution early next year. The whole Momentus FDE drives present a fast Serial ATA interface and integrated AES encryption, an AES government-category encryption accustomed to encrypt every hard drive information transparently and routinely.
The Seagate Secure line is powered by a vigorous security policy that combines durable, entirely programmed hardware-based security with a programming foundation that formulates it painless to add security-based software applications for corporation-wide encryption key management, multi-feature user authentication and other abilities that benefit lock down digital information at rest.
The drives help government, healthcare, education, banking and financial foundations to comply with consumer laws and state and federal legislation requiring identity stealing security. Therefore, the only hardware-based encryption solutions that present both AES government-grade security and national notebook protection management are the seagate secure Hard Drives.
Finally, when you are going to get a Seagate protection bear in mind that, 3.5? Seagate SCSI as well as Seagate SATA Hard Drives also own the similar features like Seagate notebook drives.
WAVE SYSTEMS: THE TREND CONTINUES UP (WAVX)
Feb 02, 2010 (SmarTrend(R) Spotlight via COMTEX) -- SmarTrend identified an Uptrend for Wave Systems (NASDAQ:WAVX) on November 16, 2009 at $1.22. In approximately 3 months, Wave Systems has returned 84.4% as of today's recent price of $2.25.
Wave Systems is currently above its 50-day moving average of $1.61 and above its 200-day moving average of $1.09. Look for these moving averages to climb to confirm the company's upward momentum.
SmarTrend will continue to scan these moving averages and a number of other proprietary indicators for any shifts in the trajectory of Wave Systems shares.
Write to Chip Brian at cbrian@tradethetrend.com
Dell Customized security offerings
including solid-state drives (SSD), full disk encryption (FDE), Trusted Platform Module (TPM)1control and Computrace software;
Mobility Personified, Collaboration Made Simple; Dell Debuts New Ultra-Portable Laptop and Updated Mobile Workstation
http://www.streetinsider.com/Press+Releases/Mobility+Personified,+Collaboration+Made+Simple%3B+Dell+Debuts+New+Ultra-Portable+Laptop+and+Updated+Mobile+Workstation/5298844.html
Cerf urges standards for cloud computing
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143440/Cerf_urges_standards_for_cloud_computing?taxonomyId=16&pageNumber=1
"At some point, it makes sense for somebody to say, 'I want to move my data from cloud A to cloud B,' " but the different clouds do not know each other, he said.
"We don't have any inter-cloud standards," Cerf said. The current cloud situation is similar to the lack of communication and familiarity among computer networks in 1973, said Cerf, who is vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google.
He also stressed cloud security. "Strong authentication will be a critical element in the securing of clouds," said Cerf. The Obama Administration, for its part, has expressed a desire to use cloud-based computing techniques to make government more efficient and for inter-agency communication, he said.
Intel CEO:Computing No Longer Confined to the PC,It's Everywhere
News Highlights
Otellini described how "personal" computing is transforming Intel and the industry.
Showcased innovative technologies and design wins across Intel's PC and other growth businesses.
Introduced several PC platform products, including over 25 Intel® Core™ processors and Intel® Wireless Display technology.
Unveiled upcoming LG Electronics* smartphone, Orange* media set-top box, and embedded technology concepts for home energy management and interactive, in-store shopping.
Revealed beta version of a software application storefront aimed at netbooks called the Intel AppUp Center. OEMs Acer*, ASUS*, Dell* and Samsung* collaborating with Intel to bring innovative apps to consumers.
INTERNATIONAL CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW, Las Vegas, Jan. 7, 2010 – Intel Corporation President and CEO Paul Otellini today talked about how "personal computing" is expanding beyond the PC to nearly every kind of electronic device, transforming Intel and the industry in the process. He also unveiled several innovative technologies and design wins that spanned Intel's PC and other growth businesses, including netbooks, smartphones, CE devices and "connected" embedded technology.
"Computing is no longer confined to your computer – it's everywhere," Otellini said during his CES keynote speech. "Advances in connectivity, intuitive user interfaces, immersive content and computer chip performance have allowed computing to move into new areas. Computing moving into all manner of devices and experiences all around us improves our personal productivity and enjoyment."
Otellini described how Intel and the industry are delivering the vision he painted in his keynote 2 years ago at CES. Computing is being integrated into every relevant aspect of people's lives, he said, whether they are on their computer or smartphone, watching TV, in the car or out shopping. A seamless personalized experience tailored to individuals' interests, needs and social networks will deliver the information, entertainment and experiences people want, whenever, however and wherever they want. To illustrate his point, he demonstrated exciting advances in mobile device applications, 3-D content, smarter phones and TVs, and areas traditionally not associated with computing such as home energy management and digital signage.
Otellini described how bringing the world of simple and useful "viral" applets to Intel® Atom™ processor-based devices will further bring this vision of "personal" computing to life, creating new usage models and a unique and powerful distribution channel for software developers. Intel created the Intel® Atom™ Developer Program in September to address this opportunity. He revealed a beta version of a software app store for netbooks that Intel launched today called the Intel® AppUpSM Center. The first apps, which span education, entertainment, games, health and other categories, are now available for free download or purchase by visiting www.intelappup.com. Acer*, ASUS*, Dell* and Samsung* are the first OEMs to announce support for apps stores based on the Intel AppUp Center. Otellini said Intel and its partners expect to expand the stores over time to include applications for other large categories such as PCs, handheld CE devices, smartphones, CE appliances, TVs and other devices based on future Intel processor families.
As an example of new ways to connect computing devices in the home, Otellini also unveiled a product today called the Intel® Wireless Display. Using a laptop powered by select all new 2010 Intel® Core™ processors and enabled with this display technology, an individual can quickly stream videos, photos and other content from the PC to the HDTV over a WiFi connection. On Jan. 17 laptops by Dell*, Sony* and Toshiba* and a TV adapter by NETGEAR* – featuring Intel® Wireless Display – will be available at Best Buy* in the United States and Canada as part of its Blue Label 2.0 program.
"Computing in the home is rapidly expanding beyond the PC," Otellini said. "The TV will continue to be a focal point of the home while becoming smarter, much in the way phones are evolving into smartphones. New user interfaces and forms of connectivity will change the way we interact with entertainment in the home."
Intel's CEO also touched on one of the most buzzed about topics at CES – 3-D stereoscopic content – and said that creating 3-D content requires a "ton of computing power." Powerful microprocessors will play a central role in the transition to 3-D content creation. Otellini also said there are select powerful PCs available today that are expanding 3-D content creation from Hollywood studios to living rooms. To prove his point, he demonstrated how an individual could do real-time creation and editing of a 3-D video with the horsepower of an Intel® Core™ i7 processor-based PC.
This morning Intel launched several PC platform products including more than 25 all new 2010 Intel® Core™ processors, wireless adapters and related chipsets for laptops, desktop PCs and embedded devices. These new processors deliver Intel's best media and graphics technologies, including the ability to intelligently adapt, automatically providing an added boost of performance for such demanding applications as HD and 3-D video creation.
Otellini also described how advancements in microprocessor technology will continue to transform how people enjoy 3-D movies and TV in their homes. To prove his point, he showed new ways to visually search for TV shows, Internet access to videos and other applications on a yet-to-be introduced Orange* media set-top box powered by one of Intel's computer-on-a-chip products. The Intel® Atom™ processor CE4100, which is currently available, is optimized for the next generation of set-top boxes, media players and connected TVs.
"Smartphones truly embody personal computing," Otellini said. "Wireless connectivity is critical and 3G is great, but it's not fast enough. 4G technologies like WiMAX are needed to deliver on the promise and potential of these new devices."
All the Internet connectivity for demonstrations in Otellini's keynote used the CLEAR* 4G mobile Internet service that has been available in Las Vegas since July. The WiMAX Forum forecasts more than 700 million people covered by WiMAX at the end of 2010.
"Two years ago I showed a suite of futuristic, compute-intensive applications for handheld devices," Otellini said. "The computing was really done on a desktop PC behind the curtain because handhelds didn't have the processing capability yet. Two years later, the future is here."
To prove his point, Otellini showed how multi-tasking capabilities combined with new user interfaces are creating exciting new applications for smartphones today. This included the world's first demonstration of the LG Electronics* GW990 smartphone to help demonstrate the performance and software compatibility of "Moorestown," Intel's next-generation platform for handhelds and smartphones. He also showcased a smartphone reference design from Aava Mobile* and a tablet reference design from OpenPeak*. "Moorestown" is scheduled to launch during the first half of the year with devices coming to market in the second half.
Otellini also described how many machines and applications traditionally not associated with computing are now connecting to the Internet, creating more personal computing experiences at home and out in the world. Examples include infotainment systems for cars, digital interactive signs, shopping kiosks and medical devices. Intel's Atom processor is making inroads in these and other intelligent devices. Otellini said customers are in process of developing 2,500 different devices and machines powered by the Intel Atom processor including a concept device for managing energy consumption in the home. He also unveiled a digital sign based on an embedded Intel® Core™ i5 processor that brings the data-richness of online shopping to the in-store shopping experience.
More information about the applications demonstrated in the speech and Intel's news at CES is available at www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/events/ces2010.
Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.
Intel, the Intel logo, Atom and Core are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.
* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
maxstealth, not exactly
Assuming the contract was signed on December 26, Wave should book $31,232 from this contract in Q4....
[(1/365) X 6 days] X $1,900,000 = $31,232.58
FM
Northrop links to academics to boost cyber defense
1:45 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) Dec 01, 2009
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Northrop Grumman Corp <NOC.N> unveiled Tuesday an industry-academic research group to tackle growing cyber threats to U.S. computer networks and to networked infrastructure.
Joining the Pentagon's No. 3 supplier by sales are cyber research arms of Carnegie Mellon, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Purdue University.
The initiative is the latest by a major U.S. defense contractor aimed at hatching solutions to cyber threats at a time that big-ticket weapons programs are being squeezed by cost-cutting imperatives.
Northrop plans to invest an unspecified "number of millions of dollars per year" to fund graduate fellowships and other research for at least five years and probably much longer, said Robert Brammer, chief technology officer for Northrop Grumman's Information Systems business unit.
"We need significant new technology developments," implemented widely, to counter growing cyber threats to the economy and to U.S. national security, he told a news conference. The theme was echoed by representatives of Carnegie Mellon's CyLab, MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and Purdue's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security.
Northrop will deal on a case-by-case basis with each research institute on splitting jointly developed intellectual property, said Brammer.
The group, called the Northrop Grumman Cybersecurity Research Consortium, initially will sponsor 10 projects with an eye to such things as attribution in cyberspace, supply chain risk and securing critical infrastructure networks, the company said.
The group's members will coordinate research projects, swap information and author joint case studies, among other efforts to speed hardware and software solutions into practice, participants said.
The consortium will serve "to help increase our nation's security in cyberspace," Brammer added in a statement. He said in a brief interview he expects some research results as soon as next year.
Northrop's cyber work was in the news recently for a report prepared by the company that implicated the Chinese authorities in extensive cyber activities against the United States.
The report, commissioned by the congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said Beijing appeared to be conducting "a long-term, sophisticated, computer network exploitation campaign" against the U.S. government and U.S. defense industries.
Brammer told the news conference that identifying a cyber aggressor was "very difficult" with current technology.
Lockheed Martin Corp <LMT.N>, the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier by sales, last month announced the formation of a cyber security technology alliance of its own with leading technology providers, including Microsoft Corp <MSFT.O>, Cisco Systems Inc <CSCO.O> and Dell Inc <DELL.O>.
Boeing Co <BA.N>, the second-biggest Pentagon contractor, also has put together a cyber-security research alliance, headquartered in Washington state, with university and commercial partners, said Barbara Fast, the company's vice president of cyber and information solutions.
China Trusted Computing Group??????
http://en.ce.cn/Insight/200910/29/t20091029_20300465.shtml
Make digital life safe and worriless
Last Updated(Beijing Time):2009-10-29 09:18
Information technology is also one of the fields having most independently innovated achievement in China. Such information technologies with independent intellectual property right as 3G, IGRS and trusted computing have developed from theory to practice, and entered the stage of large scale commercialization, which are guaranteeing our safe and worriless digital life.
There is no need to worry about password stealing when conducting online payment on computers, as well as information release when copying documents with USB flash disks, that's what the exhibition of China TCM Union's 3-year achievement held recently has displayed. In terms of the experience of this achievement exhibition, a visitor named Wang Xiaoliang has such a feeling, "If we can use the products with such technologies early, it will be very safe for my online stock speculation and my child's online shopping."
The up to date report named The 24th Report on China's Internet Development released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) showed that by the end of June, 2009, the number of broadband netizen has reached 320 million with the worldwide rank of No.1, taking up 94.3 percent of the total netizen number and increasing 3.7 percentage points than that in the end of 2008. The netizen number in China has kept a persistently stable and upward tendency, which will require a higher and higher information security.
With the widely application of informatization, the concept of trusted computing to guarantee the security of systems emerges accordingly. In 2007, China's trusted computing standard was issued, which remarks the official entrance of trusted computing to people's daily life. The trusted computing means to add hardware modules and corresponding software on computers so as to solve the security problem on computers fundamentally. Just like the leader of China Trusted Computing Group Feng Dengguo said, "This year is a year that China's trusted computing technology has been popularized widely in civilian use, and common people's digital life will be truly safe and worriless."
Independent innovation promotes technological breakthrough
3G has arrived. In such an era, such businesses as data, sound and image are presented in the manner of multimedia information. However, just like Shi Changxia, an engineer of National Computer Network and Information Security Management Center, pointed out, the development of 3G technology is accelerating the three network integration, the interaction between telecom network and Internet is more and more, and the problems on network and information security are more and more prominent. Surveys show that 56 percent of netizen have encountered network security problems, and only 29.2 percent of netizen reckon the safety of online transaction, which have restricted the development of such transactions as e-commerce and online payment to a great extent.
Since the popularization of Internet in China, domestic independent innovated information security technology has always been making breakthrough. Nowadays, China Trusted Computing Group, which is initiated by domestic enterprises, includes 19 group members and covers many fields, such as chip, computers, network interface, operation systems and application software. For the products of the trusted computing union, no matter hardware or software, all intellectual property rights of them are mastered by R&D manufacturers independently. And the important force to promote the union's increasingly development and grandness is independent innovation.
From chip to product solutions, the innovative technologies have had breakthrough one after another, which becomes the premise of our safe use of information products. In terms of hard products, NationZ Technologies Inc. launched trusted cryptography module (TCM) in July 2008, which can effectively guarantee the security of data and systems and has also become the basic of TCM products and solutions. Meanwhile, Lenovo Group launched homemade safe computers named Kaitian M400S, which are based on the safe chip that is researched and developed independently and has made another breakthrough in the field of trusted computing after Lenovo take the lead in launching its independently-innovated safe "Hengzhi" chip. Under the abundant supply of TCM chip, the trusted computing products and integrated solution have been launched by many domestic brand manufacturers successively.
In terms of software, the development of trusted computing-related operation systems and application software has also witnessed a rapid growth. Trusted KYLIN system, one of the operation systems that earlier has the ability to support trusted computing, supports the realization of security strategy in the manner of modularization. Tsinghua Tongfang Co., Ltd has independently designed and developed a series of core software, such as independent operation system. Additionally, in such aspects as data protection, identity discrimination, visit control, protection for operation system security, trusted application support system, trusted software discrimination engine, safe terminal management system and mobile storage device management, independently developed trusted application software has come out.
Industrial application realize all-around popularization
The purpose of independent innovation is to realize industrialization, which is also the most difficult part to realize. Take China's independently developed TD standard as an example, after TD-SCDMA technology that developed independently at home in 2000 was officially regarded as an international standard, TD's terminal application becomes the biggest difficulty for China Mobile's 3G commercialization. From intensive customization to releasing its own OPhone platform, the course of China Mobile's TD industrialization is extraordinarily arduous. Statistics issued by China Mobile shows that by the end of June, there have been 49 types of TD-SCDMA mobile phones, 40 types of cards for surfing Internet and 44 types of netbooks.
"Please look here, this network payment system is set up based on domestic TCM, which has integrated China UnionPay Card swiping devices and can still guarantee transaction system's security in the case of trustless network, hardware and operation systems. Applying such a system, you can use any UnionPay cards for safe network consumption and finance management without opening online bank or taking such insurance measurement as U shields and password cards. "A technical staff spoke and made a demonstration to a visitor in the exhibition area of Tsinghua Tongfang.
Such a safe information application on online shopping demonstrated by Tsinghua Tongfang is only an epitome. A trusted computing industrial chain, which involves such seven aspects as chip, hardware, operation system, support software, application software, solutions and application demonstration, has shaped a primary scale. In the future, safe information technologies will expand to such mobile fields like mobile phones and mobile network terminals to protect users' private information assets thoroughly.
yukon, one other thought
In the past Wave used to absorb these kinds of costs in the interest of furthering adoption/deployment. Now, they can charge for their services.
Code or Clear? Encryption Requirements
http://www.infolawgroup.com/tags/nist-80053/
Wave Systems, Secude, and others produce software that can augment FDE and TPMs for laptop security. The software is typically installed on both the laptop and the server. Functions include, for example, auditing the laptop’s status (to ensure that the operating system and key applications are updated and not altered), creating an audit trail of remote server access by the laptop, storing laptop keys on the company server, and allowing the company to remotely disable a laptop that has been reported lost or stolen, when a user next attempts to connect to the company’s server. These functions make sense for company-issued laptops that may store or access sensitive data; they may not be practical or acceptable for a personal laptop, home computer, or smartphone that is owned by an employee or consultant of the enterprise.
Yet another option is to purchase a small external hard drive with FDE capabilities and use that, rather than the laptop itself, to store sensitive data. Such devices are available from Dell, HP, Apple, Buffalo, Fujitsu, Paragon, Aegis, and others.
Full-Disk Encryption On the Rise
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2567672/
BOSTON, MA, Oct 07, 2009 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- HHS | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), has published a new study which shows a general trend towards the simplicity of encrypting everything on the endpoint using full-disk encryption, as compared to the precision of encrypting only specific files or folders based on content and pre-existing policies using file / folder encryption. Both approaches are widely deployed, but the research results over the last two years make it clear that full-disk encryption is on the rise.
As the use of encryption continues to proliferate throughout the enterprise, strategic investments in managing encryption and the encryption key lifecycle to support higher scale at lower cost remain the keys to success for top deployments. When normalized for the average total cost per end-user per year, the leading performers in the study spent $53 while lagging performers spent $86, a 40% advantage for top performance. Depending on the total number of endpoints in your organization, the cumulative effect of $33 savings per endpoint per year can make a compelling business case for pursuit of best practices in endpoint encryption.
"Between the many public disclosures of lost or stolen laptops containing sensitive data, and the complex and changing landscape of compliance requirements, using encryption to protect data in use at the endpoints is not a matter of motive," said Derek E. Brink, vice president and research fellow for IT Security, Aberdeen Group. "What Aberdeen's research shows is that the companies with top performance have found acceptable ways to deploy and manage full-disk encryption to balance the risks with the costs."
A complimentary copy of the "Full-Disk Encryption On the Rise" report is made available in part by the support of the following underwriters: WinMagic and the Trusted Computing Group. To obtain a complimentary copy of the full report, please visit http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=6190.
To view complimentary 30-minute webcasts highlighting findings from this and other Aberdeen IT Security research, visit http://www.brighttalk.com/channels/1209/view.
For additional access to complimentary Information Technology Research, visit research.aberdeen.com.
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
Aberdeen provides fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having queried more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen or call (617) 854-5200, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748
Keynote Speakers at Interop
http://networkcomputing.in/Events-029Sept009-Keynote-Speakers-at-Interop.aspx
7 October 2009: Coordinated Security: A New Paradigm
This keynote will cover the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) standards (especially IF-MAP) and touch on the other Trusted Computing Group (TCG) technologies, showing how TCG standards enable better coordination among security systems. The emphasis of the talk is on business perspectives and challenges and how TCG technologies address them.
Presented by Steve Hanna, Distinguished Engineer, Juniper Networks and Co-Chair TNC, Trusted Computing
Group Steve Hanna is a Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks. He is co-chair of the TNC Work Group in the TCG and co-chair of the Network Endpoint Assessment Working Group in the Internet Engineering Task Force.
Linux and the Trusted Platform Module
http://www.h-online.com/open/Linux-and-the-Trusted-Platform-Module-TPM--/features/114029
As computing and the internet become ever more a part of everyday life, reliable and strong security becomes increasingly necessary. Security is critical in the areas of business communications, online banking and online shopping, but until quite recently security has not been an integral part of the core computing hardware. Hardware manufacturers have been taking steps to rectify that by introducing the idea of trusted computing based on devices such as the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Many of these ideas, and the methods to implement them, have come from what the open source community see as the proprietary commercial establishment and so are greeted with some suspicion. Nevertheless, in order to continue to flourish, open source will have to somehow accommodate them and provide support for secure functions such as TPM... (article continues).
NIH streamlines public access to data, resources
By Sean Gallagher
Thursday, September 24, 2009
http://www.govhealthit.com/newsitem.aspx?nid=72127
The National Institutes of Health has stepped into the forefront of a government effort to make it easier for citizens to register on agency sites and access personalized data.
Instead of maintaining an internal directory of users, NIH announced earlier this month that it will leverage the OpenID standard to allow people to register using their credentials from any of 10 companies—including Yahoo, AOL and Google accounts.
The Center for Information Technology at NIH is the pilot site for the government’s new standard for open trust networks, based on standards from the OpenID Foundation and the Information Card Foundation.
The standards have been adopted by the Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management Steering Committee (ICAM)—a group set up by the Federal CIO Council—as the basis for citizen access to interactive applications on government sites.
Using the OID and ICF’s standards means that government agencies like NIH can accept credentials from commercial providers who have already established networks of trust. At the lowest level, that includes social networking and information services providers like Yahoo, AOL and Google. At a higher level, it includes financial services sites like PayPal, Equifax, and Citi, and commercial service providers including Acxiom, VeriSign, Privo and Wave Systems.
Dr. Jack Jones, NIH’s chief information officer and acting director of CIT, said that the NIH Single Sign-on service will initially accept credentials as part of an ‘Open For Testing’ phase, “with full production expected within the next several weeks.”
“At that time, OpenID credentials will join those currently in use from InCommon, the higher education identity management federation, as external credentials trusted by NIH, he added.
Mike Ozburn, a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton, said the new identity management approach will simply make it easier for the public to do business online with NIH.
“NIH deals online with everybody from high school biology teachers to physicians and a global network of medical researchers,” he said. “And they have lots of different directories that they had to manage. So what they've done is use OpenID in this trust framework to provide a streamlined approach.”
NIH will use OpenID for applications ranging from grant requests down to information requests, he said. “So now instead of managing a directory of graduate students, they can come to the site and register with, say, their Yahoo ID, and interact with their community in a much friendlier, streamlined fashion.”
Lugan, from February, 2009
With 325 million TPMs deployed worldwide there is an opportunity to enable a worldwide brand and franchise for multifactor authentication that is a once in a market opportunity. Banks have a unique opportunity because of their bricks and mortar but it will not last for long. With myspac, facebook and google are interested in identity BofA would have to wake up and execute.
For Many TPMs are a new technology and their impact it’s not yet well understood. My company Wave Systems Corp has shipped more than 45 million copies of software to enable the TPM. It is a powerful piece of the identity puzzle and it is a global standard. As the applications take advantage of it perhaps we will be able to put the concept of a User ID and Password into the Science museum next to the floppy disk both cool technologies that are part of the history books.
Drive Makers Agree on TCG Encryption Standard
http://www.cio.com/article/478766/Drive_Makers_Agree_on_TCG_Encryption_Standard?taxonomyId=1419
The world's largest disk drive makers have pledged to support three new Trusted Computing Group (TCG) encryption standards for hard disk drives, solid-state drives and encryption-key management applications.
Comments By Lucas Mearian
Mon, February 02, 2009 — Computerworld — The world's largest disk drive makers have pledged to support three new Trusted Computing Group (TCG) encryption standards for hard disk drives, solid-state drives and encryption-key management applications.
The standards group last week released the final specifications for encrypting data stored in laptop and desktop PCs and in enterprise-class drives used in servers and disk storage arrays.
"This represents interoperability commitments from every disk drive maker on the planet," said Robert Thibadeau, chief technologist at Seagate Technology LLC and chairman of the TCG.
Noting that the standard requires a "cryptographically strong password," he said any storage device that was lost or stolen would become "a brick. You [couldn't] even sell it on eBay ."
Any disk that uses the specification will be locked and unusable without a password.
TCG members pledging support for the standards include top storage vendors such as Fujitsu , Hitachi Global Storage Technologies , Seagate, Samsung Electronics, Toshiba and IBM.
In fact, Seagate, Fujitsu and Hitachi already support the standard on some of their drives.
Considering the TCG's membership, "in five years, you can imagine any drive ... will be encrypted, and there will be virtually no cost for it," said Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.
These are the three new standards:
TCG Storage Work Group Opal Security Subsystem Class, which outlines minimum requirements for storage devices used in PCs and laptops.
TCG Storage Work Group Enterprise Security Subsystem Class, for data center drives running high-volume applications.
TCG Storage Interface Interactions Specification, intended to ease interactions between TCG specifications and those of other standards groups.
Wave mention,
New Disk Encryption Standards May Complicate Data Recovery
http://www.cio.com/article/478917/New_Disk_Encryption_Standards_May_Complicate_Data_Recovery?page=3&taxonomyId=1419
Today, 90 of CBI Health's 200 laptops use Seagate's Momentus drives with native full-disk encryption. The other users will move to Seagate drives as they are replaced at end of life, Waring said.
CBI Health uses Wave Systems' Embassy Suite encryption management software to monitor its encrypted drives, including storing passwords.
Waring understands the concerns about lost passwords and damaged drives, but said Wave's software allows CBI Health to keep a single administrative password to access encrypted drives in case a user loses their password. In addition, Waring backs up all drives, so if one is damaged, the data is not lost.
"Our company as a whole is trying to harden every element of its architecture. We felt it was prudent to start where we are most vulnerable -- mobile devices that people leave in their cars or have in their homes," he said
New Disk Encryption Standards May Complicate Data Recovery
When the world's largest disk makers joined last week to announce a single standard for encrypting disk drives , the move raised questions among users about how to deal with full-disk encryption once it's native on all laptop or desktop computers.
By Lucas Mearian
Mon, February 02, 2009 — Computerworld — When the world's largest disk makers joined last week to announce a single standard for encrypting disk drives , the move raised questions among users about how to deal with full-disk encryption once it's native on all laptop or desktop computers.
For example, what happens if a user loses a password -- essentially leaving the drive filled with data that can no longer be unencrypted? Or what if a drive becomes corrupted or damaged, the data has to be recovered by a third party -- and your password is on the drive?
"Then you have just killed yourself," said Dave Hill, an analyst with the research firm the Mesabi Group.
The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) , made up of disk hardware and software vendors, last week published three encryption specifications to cover storage devices in consumer laptops and desktop computers as well as enterprise-class drives used in servers and disk storage arrays.
Some industry observers believe that within five years, all disk drive manufacturers will be offering drives, both hard disk and solid-state disk, that use the specifications for firmware-base encryption.
While enterprises using drives with full-disk encryption, such as the Seagate Momentus 5400.2, would monitor them through a central access administrator with a master password to unencrypt, consumers purchasing laptops or desktops with drives would face a more daunting scenario. They would need to either back up their data and their password, or lose the drive and data.
Robert Thibadeau, chief technologist at Seagate Technology and chairman of the TCG, said the current disk-encryption specifications allow users to create more than one password to access data, so that if a user were to lose one, he or she could still access their hard drive with a backup password.
"Furthermore, with some password settings you can provide a password that allows erasure so you can put the drive back into use, but the data will be gone," Thibadeau said.
If a drive were to become corrupted or the hardware damaged and a data recovery firm were needed to retrieve a users' disk, Thibadeau said the recovery firm could use the password to recover data from the damaged hardware. The TCG is also working with data recovery firms to create a technique that would allow them to recovery encrypted data on drives using the standards without needing a user password.
Currently, however, if a user loses their password and a drive becomes damaged or corrupted, the data is not recoverable, Thibadeau admitted.
David Virkler, CIO of AdaptaSoft Inc., a payroll systems software and services company, said administration of drives with hardware-based encryption is easy and he's seen no I/O slowdown. Virkler installed Seagate's self-encrypting, 2.5-in. Momentus 5400.2 drives in October 2007 on his company's Dell laptops in order to protect customers' financial data that his company often deals with in its service capacity. He paid a US$40 premium for each self-encrypting drive, spending about $120 total for each 80GB drive.
While the rollout was easy, he admits that if a company doesn't already have a group policy in place -- a domain name server and an active directory -- then it would be "painful" to roll out. "You'd have to manage each laptop individually," he said.
At AdaptaSoft, Virkler instituted a policy at the time of the rollout that warned workers not to keep critical data on their laptops; instead they were told to always use the company's network drive for the highest priority information in case of a drive failure. "If laptop crashes, I'm not going expend a lot of energy to get it back. I'd also imagine any data recovery options would be nearly impossible," he said.
Virkler said he's now interested in using self-encrypting drives in his data center, but he's not sure how they would work, as he also runs Citrix and virtualization software.
Ken Waring, IT director at CBI Health in Toronto, said his organization needs encryption on its drives to protect sensitive patient information, but he's also concerned about emerging technologies, including the standardization of full-disk encryption and the problems that it might create.
But, as Waring put it: "It's still a million times better than having nothing. And, as a business, you can only take what's available to you."
Dave Hill, an analyst with Mesabi Group, agreed, saying that not only is data with full-disk encryption safe if a computer is stolen or lost, the technology also automatically places a company using the drives in compliance with state laws such as California's data-breach notification mandate. That law requires companies to notify the public when unencrypted drives are lost or stolen.
CBI Health is a national network of more than 135 community and hospital-based rehabilitation, medical and health care facilities. Three years ago, Waring switched from Lenovo to Dell laptops in order to get hardware-based encryption, replacing a software-based encryption product that he found arduous to manage and unreliable. Waring found that drives encrypted with software would sometimes unencrypt themselves -- leaving the data open to theft. And "we've experienced five drive failures due to the encryption software, but none from hardware," he said.
Today, 90 of CBI Health's 200 laptops use Seagate's Momentus drives with native full-disk encryption. The other users will move to Seagate drives as they are replaced at end of life, Waring said.
CBI Health uses Wave Systems' Embassy Suite encryption management software to monitor its encrypted drives, including storing passwords.
Waring understands the concerns about lost passwords and damaged drives, but said Wave's software allows CBI Health to keep a single administrative password to access encrypted drives in case a user loses their password. In addition, Waring backs up all drives, so if one is damaged, the data is not lost.
"Our company as a whole is trying to harden every element of its architecture. We felt it was prudent to start where we are most vulnerable -- mobile devices that people leave in their cars or have in their homes," he said.
Wi-Fi + NAC = BFF
http://www.scmagazineus.com/Wi-Fi-NAC-BFF/article/147211/
Jon Green, VP, Aruba NetworksAugust 25 2009
What comes to mind when you hear about Network Access Control (NAC)? Visions of the “self-defending network” deftly wiping out viruses and spyware before they can take hold? Or is it visions of multimillion dollar switch upgrades, complaining users, and endless pain?
Though NAC has not yet made it into the big time, reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, it is likely that NAC could see a resurgence, fueled by the widespread adoption of Wi-Fi. NAC and Wi-Fi have the potential to become best friends – both with each other and with the IT security manager.
Since the adoption of the high-speed 802.11n standard by the Wi-Fi Alliance, Wi-Fi has been attracting attention in all enterprise industry segments. In part, this has been driven by initiatives underway in IT organizations such as network edge rightsizing, which attempts to cut recurring networking costs by moving as many users to Wi-Fi as possible. When the types of users and applications make Wi-Fi appropriate, the cost savings can be huge.
So what does NAC have to do with Wi-Fi? Simply put, once you have deployed a properly secured Wi-Fi network, you've already done most of the heavy lifting required for NAC. This is why it is such a good fit (and in most cases a better fit) for Wi-Fi versus wired connections and what is fueling its comeback. If you retrofit NAC onto the wired network, for all practical purposes you need to do it all at once – every port, every client, all during the same maintenance window. With Wi-Fi, you have the control to enable one client at a time for NAC, or just turn it on as you enable each client system for Wi-Fi. This makes your initial rollout simpler and more cost efficient.
But it's not just about rollout. Let's walk through all the great security features NAC brings to your Wi-Fi network.
A key consideration is authentication. A properly secured Wi-Fi network will have each client authenticated using 802.1X, as mandated by the WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) standard. You can choose to authenticate the device, the user, or both. And here's where the first bit of NAC creeps in – a fundamental premise of NAC is admitting people who should be on your network, and denying access to those who shouldn't. Just by turning on authentication, you've completed the first and most important phase of NAC.
Another function of NAC is to control access based on client posture or health -- for example, the status of anti-virus software and the date of the last A/V scan. Authentication provides an early opportunity for NAC to intervene when a client is non-compliant with IT policies. During authentication, information is being sent from the client to an authentication server already – so why not piggyback a client health report on that authentication request? If the user's device is compliant, the authentication server and NAC policy engine return an “Access Accept” message and the client goes on its way. But if the client is out of compliance, the Wi-Fi infrastructure can be signaled to quarantine the device from the network, either through VLAN segregation or through firewall policy. Once the client device has been brought into compliance – a technique known as remediation – the quarantine condition can be removed and the client allowed onto the network. This entire process can be completed in a few seconds during the authentication phase, without the user noticing that anything happened.
NAC also needs to know who the user is to be most effective. Is the user the big boss who should never be denied access, or the IT manager who should be allowed to have non-compliant operating system patches? Authentication, tied to an enterprise directory service like Active Directory or LDAP, can provide this information by looking at group membership of each individual user. Different NAC policies can be applied depending on group membership or user identity, so that instead of creating a NAC exception for that printer on the third floor, you simply tell the NAC policy engine that members of the “printers” group don't need to comply with anti-virus software requirements. Again, this is all accomplished during the few seconds when authentication is taking place.
Another thing to realize about NAC is its flexibility to adapt to your network needs. For example, let's say you need to make NAC optional because you have a huge population of Linux users, and you can't find client software for these systems that is compatible with your NAC architecture. And what about companies that have a number of employees with iPhones and other handheld devices, which run a full computer operating system but don't support enterprise security tools like anti-virus software? This is an extremely common situation in higher education, where there is no central IT control over client computing devices.
Looking at the example of anti-virus specifically, one option is to purchase an inline anti-virus appliance and install it in the network, letting it filter all network traffic to find and eliminate viruses. But this is less than optimal, as you'd need one of these appliances behind every single closet switch in the organization. Plus, an inline appliance filters everything, even from clients who have already passed NAC compliance checks because they run their own anti-virus software.
This is where Wi-Fi and NAC again provide us with an advantage. Even though Wi-Fi access points are distributed far and wide throughout your buildings, modern enterprise Wi-Fi systems typically transport all network traffic back to a central controller – this is the so-called Thin AP model. The Wi-Fi controller is typically located in a datacenter or other central location, and it's easy at that point to add inline appliances. What's more, if the Wi-Fi controller is smart enough to understand user identity and NAC posture, it can selectively send traffic to security appliances only from non-compliant devices. Clients that pass NAC posture checks can be given unfiltered access to the network, while clients that cannot validate their posture will have security services provided by the network – all unobtrusively, without the end user seeing any difference.
These ideas about Wi-Fi + NAC are starting to catch on in the industry. Many IT managers have expressed keen interest in implementing some form of network authentication, and Wi-Fi provides them a path forward that is much less expensive than retrofitting authentication onto a wired network. Do nothing more than implement authentication and you've already taken a huge step towards improving network security. The next step – posture or health checking – is less popular today, but much of this results from confusion over the many competing NAC architectures that are available. The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is trying to address this problem through its Trusted Network Connect (TNC) working group, which specifies standardized interfaces through which NAC components talk to each other. Many NAC architectures, including Microsoft's Network Access Protection (NAP), are fully compatible with TCG-TNC, making the decision to implement NAC much less risky than it used to be.
Time will tell if NAC's comeback will happen, but certain facts are undeniable: Network security is still an issue. Compliance requirements are increasing. The expense and negative publicity associated with a security breach still hurt business. NAC provides an avenue to address all these concerns, and it is far easier – and more secure – to implement NAC with Wi-Fi than it is to implement NAC on a wired network. As more and more enterprise organizations embrace Wi-Fi, it seems probable that we'll soon see NAC and Wi-Fi become “best friends forever.”
Wave Q2 Revenues Rose 142% to $4.8 Million and Its Q2 Net Loss Declined to $344,000 From a Net Loss of $5.6 Million
DJ Press Release Wire
4:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time Aug 10, 2009
Wave Q2 Revenues Rose 142% to $4.8 Million and Its Q2 Net Loss
Declined to $344,000 From a Net Loss of $5.6 Million
LEE, MA -- (MARKETWIRE) -- 08/10/09 --
Wave Systems Corp. (NASDAQ: WAVX) (www.wave.com) today reported results for the second quarter (Q2) ended June 30, 2009 and reviewed recent corporate progress and developments.
Principally reflecting higher bundled software royalties, services revenue related to a U.S. government contract that was largely completed during the period and increased software upgrade sales, Wave's Q2 2009 net revenues rose 142% to $4.8 million, compared with Q2 2008 net revenues of $2.0 million and Q1 2009 net revenues of $4.0 million. Total billings for Q2 2009 grew 107% to $4.6 million, compared to Q2 2008 total billings of $2.2 million (a reconciliation of total billings to total net revenues is included in the financial tables below).
As a result of ongoing overhead and cost management efforts, Q2 2009 selling, general and administrative expense declined 30.5% to $2.9 million as compared to $4.2 million in Q2 2008, and declined 12.7% versus the Q1 2009 level. Wave also reduced its research and development expenses by 42.7% to $1.8 million in Q2 2009 as compared to $3.1 million in Q2 2008 and in-line with the level in Q1 2009.
Wave's Q2 2009 net loss declined to $0.3 million, or $0.01 per basic and diluted share, compared with a Q2 2008 net loss of $5.6 million, or $0.10 per basic and diluted share, and Wave's Q1 2009 net loss of $1.5 million, or $0.02 per basic and diluted share. Per-share figures are based on a weighted average number of basic shares outstanding in the second quarters of 2009 and 2008 of 66.4 million and 53.9 million, respectively, and 61.9 million in the first quarter of 2009.
To highlight the company's operational performance on a cash flow basis, for Q2 2009 Wave is reporting EBITDAS, a non-GAAP measure defined as earnings before interest income (expense), income taxes, depreciation and amortization and stock-based compensation expense. For Q2 2009 Wave had positive EBITDAS of approximately $144,000 as compared to negative EBITDAS of approximately $5.0 million in Q2 2008. The Q2 2009 performance represents Wave's first-ever positive EBITDAS. A reconciliation of net income to EBITDAS is included in the financial tables below.
As of June 30, 2009, Wave had total current assets of $2.4 million which does not reflect the net proceeds of approximately $4.2 million from two equity financings completed in July 2009. Wave's deferred revenue was $1.2 million at June 30, as compared with $1.5 million at the end of Q1 '09.
Steven Sprague, president and CEO of Wave Systems, commented, "We are pleased to report top- and bottom-line progress for the second quarter which has yielded our first-ever quarter of positive EBITDAS. Our total net revenue through the first six months of 2009 has exceeded total net revenue for all of last year. We have also posted the third consecutive quarter of reduced overhead levels, highlighting our continuing focus on cost management. Notwithstanding these positive developments, Wave continued to feel the effects of the economic down-turn, as have many other technology companies. On the software upgrade sales front, though we made progress in the second quarter, enterprise upgrade sales in Q2 didn't grow as quickly as we would have liked.
"Nonetheless, we are encouraged by customer interest in enterprise upgrades, though many prospective customers have slashed their IT spending or put a temporary moratorium on new orders. Though still at modest volume levels, we continued to see growth in enterprise adoption of self-encrypting drives and EMBASSY(R) Remote Administration Server enterprise seats during the second quarter."
"There have been a number of positive developments on the partner and industry front," Sprague continued. "Last month, Dell began shipping the new self-encrypting, solid-state drives (SSD) from Samsung. A number of our customers have expressed interest in evaluating Samsung's SSDs, which we believe offer superior performance and security features. Our partners have also helped in promoting self-encrypting drives, biometrics, human interface devices (HID) and Trusted Platform Modules (TPM). We continue to focus our efforts on supporting our partners' platforms and working to offer world-class security at an attractive price. One particular benefit of our partner relationships is that our security solutions can be installed and configured at the factory, substantially simplifying their deployment for large or small enterprises.
"In another significant development, for the first time ever, the U.S. Army listed self-encrypting drives on its consolidated buy program for orders of desktop and notebook computers. Self-encrypting drives and TPMs are important tools that can enable the government to secure its vast network of computers and sensitive data. Accordingly, we view the DoD and the federal government as very important customers, and are continuing to pursue opportunities in this arena, as well as other vertical markets."
Summary of Recent Progress/Developments:
-- In May, the U.S. Army's CHESS (Computer Hardware Enterprise Software
and Solutions) organization listed self-encrypting hard drives (SED) from
Seagate and Samsung, along with Wave management software, through the
consolidated buy (9) period from June through September. This is the first
time SEDs were included as an option in the Army's consolidated buy.
-- Dell began shipping self-encrypting solid-state drives from Samsung
bundled with Wave management software in July. Additionally, Dell and
Samsung participated with Wave in a webinar for industry media and
technology analysts which providing background on solid state SEDs.
-- Wave's eSignSystems division was named to Mortgage Technology
magazine's elite "Top 50 Service Providers" list, recognizing eSign for its
contributions to the burgeoning electronic mortgage space.
-- Admiral Bobby R. Inman, USN (Ret.) Appointed as Advisor to Wave's
Board. In May, Admiral Inman assumed the title of Advisory Director and
will advise the company on its strategy and business development efforts in
the government, military, technology and energy markets.
About Wave Systems Corp.
Wave provides software to help solve critical enterprise PC security challenges such as strong authentication, data protection, network access control and the management of these enterprise functions. Wave is a pioneer in hardware-based PC security and a founding member of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), a consortium of more than 100 companies that forged open standards for hardware security. Wave's EMBASSY(R) line of client- and server-side software leverages and manages the security functions of the TCG's industry standard hardware security chip, the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and supports the TCG's "Opal" self-encrypting drive standard. Self-encrypting drives are a growing segment of the data protection market, offering increased security and better performance than many existing software-based encryption solutions. TPMs are included on an estimated 300 million PCs and are standard equipment on many enterprise-class PCs shipping today. Using TPMs and Wave software, enterprises can substantially and cost-effectively strengthen their current security solutions. For more information about Wave and its solutions, visit http://www.wave.com.
Safe Harbor for Forward-Looking Statements
This press release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act), including all statements that are not statements of historical fact regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of the company, its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) the company's financing plans; (ii) trends affecting the company's financial condition or results of operations; (iii) the company's growth strategy and operating strategy; and (iv) the declaration and payment of dividends. The words "may," "would," "will," "expect," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe," "intend" and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company's ability to control, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. Wave assumes no duty to and does not undertake to update forward-looking statements. All brands are the property of their respective owners.
WAVE SYSTEMS CORP. AND SUBSIDIARIES
Consolidated Statements of Operations
(Unaudited)
Three months ended Six months ended
June 30, June 30, June 30, June 30,
2009 2008 2009 2008
------------ ------------ ------------ ------------
Net revenues:
Licensing $ 4,424,492 $ 1,946,100 $ 8,155,388 $ 3,621,605
Services 373,148 39,193 676,433 62,767
------------ ------------ ------------ ------------
Total net revenues 4,797,640 1,985,293 8,831,821 3,684,372
------------ ------------ ------------ ------------
Operating expenses:
Licensing - cost
of sales 184,729 209,707 350,401 368,868
Services - cost
of sales 202,441 29,869 384,829 48,183
Selling, general,
and
administrative 2,948,138 4,243,656 6,326,659 8,540,746
Research and
development 1,800,962 3,145,326 3,626,086 6,398,805
(MORE TO FOLLOW)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Category Codes:
New York(R=USNY), North America(R=NAMR), United States of America(R=US), Americas(R=AMR), Technology (Industry)(I=TEC), Software(I=SOF), Software & Computer Services(I=SS), Technology (Supersector)(I=ET), Money & Finance(G=MF), Stock Price Index(G=SPI), Stocks & Bonds(G=SAB), Economics & Trade(G=ET)
Companies:
MSI launches new AMD-based motherboard and graphics card
.... and TPM technology offers a more secure way to store files, highlighted the company.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090714PR206.html
Dell launches Vostro 1220
Dell stated that Vostro 1220 offers plethora of security options, like solid state drives that are three-times reliable than traditional hard drives, fingerprint readers with easy-to-use software, and multi-factor authentication and encrypted hard drives (TPM, FDE or Wave software) that can easily encrypt data without impacting system performance.
http://www.ciol.com/SMB/SMB-Product-Showcase/Products/Dell-launches-Vostro-122/14709122241/0/
New Seagate Cheetah Drives Go High-Capacity, High-Performance
However, the self-encrypting option requires a Trusted Computing Group-compliant host or controller. The Trusted Computing Group approved the encryption standard earlier this year, and host-based controllers are expected to be available later this month, Worth said. As a result, the self-encryption option for the new Seagate drives will be available in September, she said.
http://www.crn.com/storage/218500021;jsessionid=LSPEBOJ3BXMTGQSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN
Helpful, then there's this aspect:
Task force aims to improve U.S. cybersecurity
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11494
The task force is headed by Representatives Jim Langevin (D-RI) and Michael McCaul (R-TX), Microsoft's vice president for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney and retired Navy admiral Bobby Inman.
Czar Prospect Offers Cybersecurity Vision
http://www.govinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=1580&opg=1
Scott Charney wasn't auditioning to be President Obama's cybersecurity adviser, but his appearance Thursday before a House panel shows why the Microsoft executive is considered by some to be a leading candidate for the White House job.
In testimony before the House Committee on Science and Technology's Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, the Microsoft corporate vice president of trustworthy computing provided details on a plan to exploit complementary capabilities at the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create what he called a "hybrid model for information security that improves security across the federal enterprise and fosters agility to counter ever-changing threats."
And, in discussing the relationship between government and business to jointly safeguard federal IT systems and the nation's critical IT infrastructure, Charney offered astute observations on such a challenge. "Early efforts on partnership focused on information sharing. The problem is that information sharing is not an objective, it's a tool," he said. "You share information so you can do something. Sharing information just for the sake of sharing information doesn't make any operational change that makes security better. So, the first problem was the wrong focus, focus on sharing instead of action."
Charney - who co-chaired the highly respected Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency - hasn't publicly said he'd take the White House post if offered, but during the hearing Committee Chairman David Wu, D.-Ore., and ranking minority member Adrian Smith, R.-Neb., were deferential to all witnesses, but seem to focus more attention on Charney than the others. And he didn't disappoint, showing his wide knowledge of the challenges facing the government in securing IT.
Hybrid Cybersecurity Model
In his testimony, Charney said some elements of cybersecurity are common throughout government, such as developing IT security plans and implementing the Federal Desktop Core Configuration, which requires purchased PCs and laptops be preinstalled with specific security controls. Yet, he pointed out how diverse various components of federal government are from one another in terms of functions and systems. "A fully centralized model for managing security will not work," he said. "Each agency has a unique security paradigm with different threats, so each agency needs to mange its own risk."
Still, he said, if some security controls should be applied uniformly across the government, but other controls need to be tailored to address specific agencies' missions and risk, a hybrid model must be fashioned. Such a model, he said, would include a centrally managed horizontal security function to provide a foundation of governmentwide policy, standards, and oversight; as well as vertical security functions resident in individual agencies to manage their risks.
In this hybrid model, Charney said, DHS and NIST would provide a horizontal and individual agencies would have vertical functions. DHS would develop minimum baselines for security and work with the standards community where appropriate. It also would processes to foster implementation of best practices that exceed minimum standards so federal agencies can more quickly achieve higher levels of security when necessary to address their own unique risks. Under the plan he outlined, NIST would create governmentwide standards to help agencies meet the security control policy set by DHS.
Each agency would be responsible to assess its risks and implement effective management controls, activities to configure and patch systems, build effective incident response capabilities, identify and detect unauthorized access, test security controls regularly, audit for compliance and implement security changes.
Charney said this plan has many challenges. NIST needs more funding for its Computer Security Division to continue its focus on standards. "With greater resources," he said, "NIST will make a more dramatic impact on the cybersecurity of the computing ecosystem."
The Microsoft executive noted that DHS has struggled without a strategic plan for cybersecurity, resulting in an unfocused approach to IT security that wasn't optimized for effectiveness. "The lack of a cohesive vision was exacerbated by constant changes in leadership, lack of personnel, and inadequate funding for its mission," he testified. "Moving forward, DHS should develop a strategic vision and look to build on its strengths in partnership, information sharing and growing security capabilities to function in the horizontal role."
Government-Private Sector Cybersecurity Partnership
Efforts in the 1990s to develop a partnership between the federal government and the private sector to secure critical IT suffered because the two sides focused on information sharing and not on the end goal of information security, Charney told the lawmakers.
Another problem was the government's attitude to either share information with all business partners or none. "Government has been concerned, for understandable reasons, about not playing and picking favorites in the marketplace," Charney said. "It often took the view that it has to share with everyone or no one. And, of course, when you share a lot of information about vulnerabilities, threats and risks too broadly, you actually make the problem worse, and if you share with no one, then there's nothing."
Charney said the government must decide which party can take action on the information, and then share it with that organization, and "not worry so much about sharing with everyone or no one because that's not a productive model."
The government-private sector partnership never had the right philosophical underpinning, he said, adding: Markets deliver some level of security; customers demand it, markets deliver it. But markets don't always provide the level of security government needs for public safety and national security. "Markets aren't designed to do national security. You cannot make a market case for the Cold War," he said. "In those situations, the government steps in and does things."
Charney said the proper basis for a government-private sector cybersecurity partnership is to determine how much security the marketplace can provide - "and a little more, because companies do have a sense of corporate responsibility; they do care about public safety and national security" - and ascertain what level of security the government seeks.
"The key is filling the gap between what the market would provide and what the government sees as necessary, and there are a lot of ways to fill that gap," Charney said. "Acquisition regulations are an example to drive the market in a particular direction, regulations, standardization. There are many ways to fill a gap: tax incentives. So, the real key, and I think is the basis of the partnership, is to focus on meeting the requirements that span from between where markets are and governments want, and figures out the right way to incentivize the right behaviors so the products take you where you want to go."
Public-Private Cybersecurity Expertise
If Obama is seeking what he calls a cybersecurity coordinator who's not only knowledgeable in IT security matters, but has extensive government and private sector experience, Charney is eminently qualified.
As head of Microsoft's trustworthy computing office, Charney heads a group that ensures products and services uphold the company's security and privacy policies as well as oversee corporate efforts to address critical infrastructure protection, network security and industry outreach about privacy and security. Before joining Microsoft in 2002, Charney led the PrincewaterhouseCooper's cybercrime prevention and response practice.
In the 1990s, Charney served as the chief of computer crime and intellectual property in the criminal division of the Justice Department, helping prosecute nearly every major hacker case in the United States from 1991 to 1999. He co-authored the original Federal Guidelines for Searching and Seizing Computers, the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, federal computer crime sentencing guidelines and the Criminal Division's policy on appropriate computer use and workplace monitoring.
According to his Microsoft biography, Charney also chaired the Group of Eight nations Subgroup on High-Tech Crime, served as vice chair and head of the U.S. delegation to an ad hoc group of experts on global cryptography policy for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In addition, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to OECD's Group of Experts on Security, Privacy and Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Information Infrastructure.
Charney also served as an assistant district attorney in Bronx County, N.Y., where he later was named deputy chief of the Investigations Bureau. In addition to supervising 23 prosecutors, he developed a computer-tracking system that was later used throughout the city for tracking criminal cases.
Bringing Moore’s Law to the Data Storage Market
Are spinning disks on their way out?
As Mike Speiser discussed recently, flash solid-state drives (SSD) will enable a once-in-a-decade improvement in storage price-performance. Crucially, flash SSDs enable storage to keep up with the rapid advances in CPU speeds driven by Moore’s Law. This may enable customers to dramatically scale back purchases of expensive Fibre Channel (FC) disks and, potentially, high-end FC arrays. However, some early flash SSDs implementations come with a set of limitations that customers need to be aware of, notably around usability and resilience.
Why now?
Solid-state disks have been proclaimed the “future of storage” in the past, but we are now approaching an actual inflection point because:
SSD pricing is declining at more than 50 percent per year, and SSDs have recently become cheaper than their nearest competitior (FC disks) as measured by effectively usable capacity; the gap will continue to widen in favor of SSD, as disk prices decline just 25-30 percent annually.
The exciting (and cost-effective) use case for SSD is as a cache for frequently accessed data that front-ends lower-cost SAS and potentially SATA disks, rather than as primary storage.
Weaknesses of using SSDs as flash memory are starting to be addressed through smart firmware that sits in the controller.
Pace of adoption
Overall, TechAlpha believes flash SSD is one of the most disruptive trends in storage, but it will only become material to the market beyond 2010. Customers we interviewed for our GigaOM Pro research note (subscription required) tend to focus more on cost per GB in the current economic climate, and less on cost per Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS), which is where flash SSD excels. However, the vendor executives we interviewed agree that flash SSD is the single most disruptive trend for which their companies are preparing, causing them to completely rethink how and where data is stored.
Three developments are likely to converge in 2011 and drive broader adoption:
Vendors will bring more robust flash SSD solutions to market.
Customers will look beyond short-term IT cost savings toward business value enabled by technological innovation. One large bank we heard from estimated that every millisecond of storage response time reduction translates to tens of millions of dollars in incremental annual profit, because securities trades are executed faster.
Flash SSD pricing will be comfortably below that of FC on a cost-per-effective-GB basis.
We believe flash SSD will start to replace a good share of the high-performance (i.e., FC) disk market in the next 2-3 years. Already, flash SSDs are starting to take off in the high IOPS use cases, delivering much reduced power consumption and radically better read performance. The speed of broader adoption, though, will largely depend on how well vendors address some limitations (which we describe in more detail in our GigaOM Pro note). The early adopter workloads will likely be search, video rendering, email and potentially other mission-critical applications.
Juergen Urbanski is managing director of TechAlpha, an industry analyst and management consulting firm serving enterprise IT executives on aligning IT infrastructure and applications with business needs, and a contributor to the GigaOM Analyst Network.
Intel's SSDs launch in two weeks
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1406326/intel-34nm-nand-ssds-launch-weeks
By Sylvie Barak
Friday, 26 June 2009, 15:31 RUMOURS ARE growing louder that Intel will be launching new SSDs based on the firm's 34nm NAND chips within just a couple of weeks. Previous reports had said Chipzilla planned to come out with its new 34nm flash memory drives in Q4, but that timetable has been nudged up.
Solid State Drives (SSDs) have been around for a while, but their high costs, limited capacities and sometimes questionable reliability have ensured the drives have remained somewhat niche. But this is all about to change, apparently.
We've been told that with these new 34nm NAND SSDs, users can expect higher performance, higher capacities, and most importantly, lower prices.
Amongst the 34nm offerings hot off the production line will be a 320GB drive, plus 160GB and 80GB capacity too. But there very well could be more. Our sources tell us new capacities will be big enough to replace the HDDs in most, if not all laptops.
Intel is said to be really optimistic about SSD prospects in 2010, especially considering the smaller and cheaper process node along with SSD specific optimizations built into Windows 7.
So brace yourselves for these new drives coming out in about two weeks, and watch as prices fall to lower levels. µ