SecureAgent Administrator is the interface to SecureAgent which is used to manage configuration of SecureAgent servers safely, securely and remotely.

SecureAgent Administrator enables data center personnel to administer, from one work station or several, all machines in the enterprise, regardless of their physical location. Use SecureAgent Administrator to set up user identifications, groups and privilege levels, as well as to configure control units, addresses and logical units of a mainframe computer.

SecureAgent Administrator enables remote access with complete security.

For more information visit our web site at www.secureagent.com.

Obama said soon after he took office that he would name such an official and finally tabbed Howard Schmidt, who has headed security efforts for Microsoft and eBay and was vice chairman of President Bush's Critical Infrastructure Protection board. Schmidt also has worked with the Defense Department and federal and local law enforcement agencies.

The announcement said he was chosen for his "unique background and skill sets."

Before his selection was announced, he had given CSOonline a set of predictions for 2010 security issues, headed by a forecast that malicious programs will increasingly target mobile devices.

Harvard researchers studied data from 4,000 hospitals over four years and concluded that the immense cost of buying and installing huge systems far outweighs any cost benefits. And, the lead researcher, Dr. David Himmelstein, told ComputerWorld there is a further problem because "computer systems are built for the accountants and managers and not built to help doctors, nurses and patients."

In fact, he said, for most doctors, computer systems in hospitals and clinics just increase the time they must spend inputting data.

He said the few installations that did realize some savings and improve efficiency custom-built systems after months of research. Developers at some of the more successful installations told Himmelstein they didn't write manuals or offer training -- "If you need a manual, then the system doesn't work. If you need training, the system doesn't work."

The study came out as the federal government prepares to spend $19 billion for development of an electronic health records system, offering up to $64,000 for each doctor who develops and uses effectively such a system.

EarthLink started the project, but abandoned all its municipal wireless efforts two years later. A local firm, Network Acquisition Co., bought it from EarthLink, but now the city council is being asked to approve a project for the city to take it over.

Under the proposal, the city would buy the network for $2 million -- about what Network Acquisition paid for it -- and use it primarily for city operations. The city then would invest about $17 million the next five years to finish building the network to cover the whole city and to add public safety radios to the infrastructure. Officials say savings from more efficient operations would cover the cost.

The city also hopes to bring in revenue from partnering with educational and other organizations and will provide some free public access but is dropping plans to make sure it offers free or very low-cost Internet access to low income areas.

The service provider, UltraDNS, responded quickly and quelled the attack in about an hour. It said the quick response limited the problems mainly to northern California.

But for a time sites were either unavailable or had extremely sluggish responses. It also affected some smaller sites that rely on Amazon for Web hosting services.

The material was made vulnerable because of a gap in encryption -- data sent back from the planes is not encrypted, but military sources say the problem is being addressed. The intercepts apparently were staged by an Iranian-backed group, using a Russian-made program called SkyGrabber, which the Wall Street Journal reported is readily available. It intercepts satellite feeds of music, photos, programs or other material.

A company Web site says no Internet connection is needed -- "Just customize your satellite dish to selected satellite provider and start grabbing."

The intercepts don't allow the militants to interfere with drone operations, but do permit them to view objects photographed by the drones so they would have an idea of potential targets and other uses.

The Journal said tens of millions had been stolen using a malicious program created in Russia called Black Energy. It is capable of stealing banking authentication credentials. The Journal story quoted FBI sources.

But Citigroup in a pair of statements and an internal memo said the Journal story was inaccurate. "Any allegation that the FBI is working a case at Citigroup involving tens of millions of losses is just not true," Citigroup said.

IDG quoted an unidentified federal law enforcement source as saying the Journal story was wrong and appeared to have confused a previously-reported 2007 break-in of teller machines with a long-running effort to pilfer bank accounts using password-stealing programs. IDG said a second federal source agreed with this view.

That has been a murky legal issue at least ever since the Internet began to boom.

The case to be decided involves a narrower issue -- whether text messages sent by a California policeman on his city-issued pager were his private property. The police chief in Ontario, Calif., discovered the messages, some of them sexually-explicit notes to the officer's girlfriend.

The officer sued, claiming the chief invaded his privacy by reading the messages without any suspicion of wrongdoing. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a deeply-divided decision, ruled the officer had a right to privacy.

Many employers routinely tell workers their company equipment is not to be used for private material and Ontario tells its employees the city "reserves the right to monitor and log all network activity including e-mail and Internet use, with or without notice." But Policeman Jeff Quon said when pagers were given to SWAT team members they were told they could be used for personal purposes, but would have to pay for any over-use charges. The court majority said this informal policy allowing personal messages meant Quon had a right to privacy.

The Supreme Court could issue a narrow ruling just on this point, but also could use the case to set a trend in property rights for material generated on company-owned computers.

The major outage affected only messaging services, including e-mail, but not telephone service. It lasted a good portion of two days.

The earlier outage lasted only a few hours and prevented mail from being sent.

The outages affected all major networks. No reason was given for the problems.

That is the date of its scheduled quarterly patch. Adobe said rushing out a patch for the PDF problem, which is being actively exploited, would have pulled workers away from other patches scheduled for January and would have resulted in delaying the quarterly patch.

There is an option to protect Adobe Reader and Acrobat users -- they can disable JavaScript in those applications until the patch is ready.

Thompson, chief research officer at AVG, failed to notify Visa he would be using its card out of the country, so when he used it to check out of a London hotel it was flagged for a check. He had to speak on the phone with a Wachovia fraud prevention official.

But that official didn't just ask mother's maiden name, which he had provided the bank as a security check. He also asked questions about Thompson's daughter-in-law, such as her maiden name and age range.

Thompson was shocked at the amount of information the bank had on her. The security official said it was all publicly available information, but Thompson reasoned the only source for it was Facebook, where the woman is a friend. He views it as a serious data privacy issue if companies are using social networks to gather personal information.

American Express and other card issuers had to cover costs of re-issuing cards following the theft of more than 130 million card numbers from Heartland. A number of individuals have been charged with breaking into the payment system or using stolen information for fraud.

A number of other financial institutions have sued Heartland, but the AmEx deal is the first major settlement with a card brand.

A new version of its SYNC connectivity system will let a user plug in a wireless card which then will make a signal available to others in the car. Drivers hopefully will not use it but other passengers will be able to shop, play Internet games or meander social networks.

Heat is a major consideration for big servers, but Phil Hughes and Bob Lipp think they have come up with a better system, using liquid cooling. Hughes, a system engineer with many years of semiconductor experience, and Lipp, a semiconductor designer, developed a "heat rising" technique which replaces the traditional heat sinks and fans that cool big server and database installations.

They use a heat riser of a material like aluminum which draws heat to the sides of the server lid, where it is then moved to a cold plate that has cooling fluid circulating through it.

They figure removing fans can reduce server energy needs by 10 to 40 percent and a 5,000-server installation could cut costs by about 44 percent.

Like Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, once development got going, Hughes and Lipp moved out of the garage and into larger quarters. Now they've won a state energy grant and installed a 36-server unit to Sun Microsystems for testing.

You can achieve that with a couple of simple rules: Be prepared and be cautious.

Be prepared by having good anti-virus and anti-spyware programs which are kept up to date and run regularly. Be prepared by making sure patches to operating systems and applications programs are monitored and installed promptly -- and by keeping up with the latest security issues (this newsletter will help). And be prepared by having employees and other computer users educated and aware of security issues.

Be cautious. Don't open messages from unfamiliar sources. Be cautious about opening e-mail attachments unless you know and trust the source. Be cautious about visiting unknown or exotic Web sites. Be wary of strange pop-ups and unexpected warnings which may conceal malicious content.

And, of course, take advantage of SecureAgent Software's many offerings, using those which fit into your system and operation.